INTERNATIONAL   MINDS 

AND  THE  SEARCH  FOR 

THE  RESTFUL 


GUSTAV  POLLAK 


INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

AND  THE  SEARCH  FOR 

THE  RESTFUL 


By 
GUSTAV  POLLAK 


THE  NATION  PRESS.   INC. 

20  VESBY  STREET 

NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,     1919 
BY    GUSTAV    POLLAK 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

The  author  refers  the  Reader  for  a  fuller  treat- 
ment of  the  subjects  discussed  in  this  little  book 
to  his  previously  published  volumes  on 

International  Perspective  in  Criticism: 
Goethe,  Grillparzer,  Sainte-Beuve,  Lowell. 
New  York:  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.     1914. 

The  Hygiene  of  the  Soul:  The  Memoir  of  a 
Physician  and  Philosopher.  New  York:  Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.     1910. 

Franz  Grillparzer  and  the  Austrian  Drama. 
New  York:  Dodd,  Mead  &  Co.     1907. 

The  principal  points  of  what  he  then  said  are 
here  once  more  emphasized,  and  he  hopes  that 
their  restatement  at  the  present  time  will  be  con- 
sidered not  inopportune. 

Keene  Valley,  N.  Y. 
August,  1919. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I.  Literature  and  Patriotism     .       .  5 

II.  Goethe's  Universal  Interests       .  13 

III.  Grillparzer's  Originality      .       .  34 

IV.  Sainte-Beuve's  Unique  Position    .  49 
V.  Lowell  :  Patriot  AND  Cosmopolitan  68 

VI.  Permanent  Literary  Standards    .  8 1 

VII.  Feuchtersleben  the  Philosopher  ioi 

VIII.  The  Hygiene  of  the  Soul      .       .  117 

IX.  Feuchtersleben's  Aphorisms        .  162 

X.  Feuchtersleben's  Influence       .  172 


INTERNATIONAL    MINDS    AND 

THE     SEARCH     FOR 

THE  RESTFUL 


Literature  and  Patriotism 

"I  AM  convinced,"  says  Lessing,  "that  no 
nation  on  earth  has  a  monopoly  of  intellect  in 
any  of  its  manifestations.  I  know  very  well  that 
people  talk  of  the  profoundly  serious  English- 
men and  the  witty  Frenchmen,  but  who  has 
made  this  distinction?  Surely  not  Nature,  who 
impartially  distributes  all  her  gifts.  There  are 
just  as  many  witty  Englishmen  as  witty  French- 
men, and  just  as  many  profoundly  serious 
Frenchmen  as  profoundly  serious  Englishmen." 
We  have  in  these  words  an  implied  declaration 
of  his  belief,  borne  out  by  all  his  teachings,  that 
intellect  recognizes  no  distinctions  of  nation- 
ality, race,  or  religion. 

Chauvinistic  criticism  of  foreign  achievement 

is  merely  proof  of  inability  to  criticize  at  all. 

Herder  condemns  the  expression,  "the  races  of 

mankind,"    as    "ignoble   words."     And    if    the 

[5] 


6  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

philosopher  and  scientist  is  thus  admonished  to 
divest  himself  of  a  prejudice  which  would  segre- 
gate mankind  along  narrow  and  arbitrary  lines, 
with  how  much  greater  force  comes  the  warning 
to  the  literary  critic,  who  is  solely  concerned 
with  the  beautiful  in  human  thought  and  expres- 
sion. 

Among  the  eminent  writers  of  present-day 
England  Morley  and  Bryce  have  shown  inter- 
national sympathies  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 
Among  our  own  great  writers  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  possessed  in  full  measure  active  sym- 
pathy with  other  nations.  Writing  from  Paris 
to  his  parents,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  he  said: 
"One  of  the  greatest  pleasures  of  living  abroad 
is  to  meet  in  such  an  easy,  pleasant  sort  of  a  way 
people  from  all  quarters  of  the  world.  Greek 
and  Barbarian,  Jew  and  Gentile,  differ  much 
less  than  one  thinks."  We  recognize  in  the 
language  of  the  young  American  student  the 
spirit  of  the  future  cosmopolitan  thinker. 

Unfortunately,  the  day  is  not  yet  past  when 
the  interests  of  nations  were  considered  as  neces- 
sarily opposed  to  each  other.  A  hundred  years 
ago  Friedrich  Schlcgel  wrote: 


LITERATURE  AND  PATRIOTISM  7 

The  dwellers  in  Asia  and  the  people  of  Europe  ought 
to  be  treated  in  popular  works  as  members  of  one  vast 
family,  and  their  history  will  never  be  separated  by  any 
student  anxious  fully  to  comprehend  the  bearing  of 
the  whole;  but  the  idea  of  Oriental  genius  in  literature 
generally  entertained  in  the  present  day  is  founded  on 
that  of  a  few  Asiatic  writers  only,  the  Persians  and 
Arabs  in  particular,  and  a  few  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, in  so  far  as  we  may  be  permitted  to  view  the  latter 
as  poetry ;  but  there  are  many  other  Asiatic  nations  to 
whom  this  ordinary  opinion  is  by  no  means  applicable. 

Are  East  and  West  nearer  to  each  other  to- 
day? Few  indeed  are  the  great  writers  who 
have  heard  the  call  of  the  Orient. 

I  have  ventured  to  group  together  in  these 
pages  five  literary  men  of  acknowledged  impor- 
tance— writers  whom  the  literatures  of  Ger- 
many, Austria,  France  and  America  cherish 
among  their  greatest  possessions,  who  were 
deeply  imbued  with  the  national  spirit  and  yet 
endowed  with  international  sympathies,  who 
surveyed  mankind  and  its  past  achievements 
with  a  philosophic  gaze,  who  studied  and 
thought  as  long  as  they  lived,  and  looked  for 
beauty  in  literature,  finding  expression  for  the 
perfect  things  which  their  search  revealed  in 
beautiful  words  of  their  own.     I  have  consid- 


8  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

ered  mainly  the  critical  activity  of  the  first  four 
— Goethe,  Grillparzer,  Sainte-Beuve,  and 
Lowell. 

Though  there  have  been  greater  scholars  in 
special  fields  who  followed  the  critical  calling, 
no  other  literary  critics  brought  to  their  task 
more  varied  knowledge  and  a  clearer  percep- 
tion of  the  dignity  of  literary  achievement.  All 
were  careful  and  keen-eyed  observers;  each 
taught  and  practised  that,  while  in  veneration 
for  the  literary  traditions  of  the  past,  and  in 
close  study  of  the  great  models,  are  rooted  the 
guiding  principles  of  criticism,  the  literary 
man,  above  all,  must  live  in  the  present  and 
satisfy  the  demands  of  the  hour.  They  had  a 
clear  eye  for  the  realities  of  life  and  inculcated 
and  practised  good  citizenship.  All  four  rose 
to  high  public  station,  though  Lowell  alone  was 
consistently  active  in  the  political  developments 
of  his  country.  It  was  their  common  lot  to  be 
accused  of  lack  of  patriotism,  but  all  alike  an- 
swered and  refuted  the  criticism  of  their  politi- 
cal adversaries.  Goethe,  occupying  the  highest 
positions  in  the  duchy  of  Saxe-Weimar,  Grill- 
parzer as  member,  in  his  old  age,  of  the  Austrian 


LITERATURE  AND  PATRIOTISM  9 

House  of  Peers,  Sainte-Beuve  as  French  Sena- 
tor, Lowell  as  American  Minister  in  Spain  and 
England — all  bore  their  public  dignities  easily 
and  worthily. 

Each  of  these  men  had  to  contend  against 
physical  depressions,  which  in  the  case  of  Grill- 
parzer  and  Lowell  were  accentuated  by  inheri- 
tance; but  they  all  conquered  their  weaknesses 
by  sheer  will-power  and  reliance  on  intellectual 
resources.  They  rose,  like  all  lofty  minds,  into 
regions  of  serenity.  Their  idealism,  as  reflected 
in  their  critical  standards,  bears  no  trace  of 
physical  infirmity  or  mental  indecision.  Con- 
tradictions there  are  in  their  critical  utterances, 
but  we  see  in  these  merely  varying  aspects  of  the 
subjects  due  to  changing  moods  and  the  flight  of 
time.  Personal  prejudice  but  rarely  clouds  their 
literary  judgment. 

While  neither  Grillparzer  nor  Lowell  had 
the  encyclopaedic  range  of  knowledge  over 
which  Goethe's  vision  swept,  nor  the  familiarity 
with  the  natural  sciences  which  the  study  of 
medicine  had  brought  to  Sainte-Beuve,  they 
seized  as  eagerly  as  Goethe  and  Sainte-Beuve 
what  served  their  purpose.     We  find   Lowell 


10  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

early  in  his  career  devoting  many  hours  each 
day  to  the  study  of  German  and  Spanish,  and 
he  mastered  the  latter  language  perhaps  even 
more  completely  than  Grillparzer,  though  he 
did  not  draw  the  same  inspiration  from  its  poets. 
Goethe,  Grillparzer,  Sainte-Beuve,  and 
Lowell  alike  sought  to  the  last  the  companion- 
ship of  wise  books,  and  their  critical  faculty 
remained  undimmed  in  old  age.  Eleven  days 
before  his  death  Goethe  writes  to  his  friend 
Zelter  a  letter  in  the  liveliest  strain;  his  mind 
is  occupied  with  "all  sorts  of  examples  from 
ancient  history,"  with  an  archaeological  discov- 
ery of  great  personal  interest  to  him,  but  whose 
intrinsic  importance,  he  says,  one  ought  to  be 
careful  not  to  overrate:  he  speaks  of  remains  of 
fossil  animals  and  plants  that  are  accumulating 
around  him :  he  finds  that  it  has  become  the  fash- 
ion for  English,  French,  and  Germans  "to 
express  themselves  in  an  incomprehensible  man- 
ner," and  he  longs  for  "the  emphatic  language 
of  some  Italian."  And  he  praises  Zelter  for 
remaining  "firm  in  the  midst  of  what  is  fleet- 
ing." "As  for  myself,"  he  says,  "living  chiefly 
in  the  past,  less  in  the  future,  and  at  present 


LITERATURE  AND  PATRIOTISM  II 

thinking  of  what  is  very  remote,  bear  in  mind 
that  I  am  quite  content." 

Sainte-Beuve,  for  years  in  the  agonies  of  a 
cruel  and,  as  he  realized,  hopeless  malady,  kept 
on  writing  with  stoic  determination  for  the  press 
almost  to  the  last  hour.  Grillparzer's  closing 
eyes  rested  on  a  volume  of  the  Greek  tragedian 
who,  above  all  others,  had  been  his  solace  in  life. 
Lowell  abandoned  his  reading  only  with  life 
itself.  During  his  last  illness,  "his  books,"  in 
the  words  of  his  biographer,  Horace  E.  Scud- 
der,  "were  close  at  hand  and  his  constant 
friends.  He  re-read  Boswell's  Johnson  for  the 
fourth  time,  and  he  read  the  recently  published 
full  diary  of  Walter  Scott.  He  took  up  novel 
reading,  rather  a  new  taste,  and  amused  himself 
with  contemporaneous  society  in  England  as 
depicted  by  Norris.  .  .  .  Death  found  him 
cheerful." 

Such  was  the  consistent  attitude  toward  life 
and  literature  of  these  eminently  representative 
men  of  letters.  Theirs  was — with  all  the  differ- 
ences in  temperament  and  personal  character- 
istics— a  self-contained  repose,  as  free  from  flip- 
pant self-sufficiency  as  it  was  from  the  shallow 


12  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

optimism  which  sees  in  the  things  of  this  world 
the  best  of  all  possible  things.  Though  Lowell 
betrayed  the  Puritan  strain  in  his  blood  and  pro- 
fessed a  certain  allegiance  to  inherited  faith, 
and  though  Sainte-Beuve  sometimes  toyed  with 
Catholicism,  they  ranged  themselves  with 
Goethe  and  Grillparzer  on  the  side  of  intellec- 
tual independence  concerning  all  the  religious 
movements  that  have  left  their  impress  on  lit- 
erature and  swayed  thinking  men.  All  four,  no 
matter  what  their  subject,  spoke  from  the  depth 
of  conviction.  We  feel  at  all  times  the  sheer 
intellectual  force  of  their  utterances,  and  we 
yield  to  the  charm  of  their  diction.  Of  each  of 
them,  at  his  best,  is  true  what  Emerson  said  of 
Montaigne:  ''Cut  his  words,  and  they  bleed." 


GOETHE'S  UNIVERSAL  INTERESTS 

Sainte-Beuve  speaks  of  Goethe  as  the  great- 
est of  all  critics.  He  certainly  stands  alone  in 
the  comprehensiveness  of  his  intellectual  sym- 
pathies and  the  vastness  of  his  knowledge,  in  the 
manifestations  of  a  powerful,  creative  genius 
finding  critical  utterance.  All  the  phases  of 
Goethe's  activity  have  been  amply  discussed  in 
that  vast  Goethe  literature  to  which  all  nations 
have  contributed,  but  something,  it  would  seem, 
is  still  to  be  said  of  his  unique  importance  as  an 
international  critic. 

Wisdom  such  as  Goethe  possessed  is  not 
learned  from  books;  he  looked  upon  life  and 
men,  upon  literature,  science,  and  art  with  equal 
interest  and  equal  detachment.  The  world  can 
show  no  other  example  of  so  much  creative 
power  joined  to  so  much  critical  acumen.  His 
poetic  productions,  as  he  so  often  pointed  out, 
were  born  of  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  his 
critical  wisdom  was  the  result  of  life-long  self- 
restraint.  His  attitude  was  always  judicial, 
though  at  times  there  was  in  his  judgments  a 
certain  lack  of  finality,  as  if  he  felt  the  need  of 

[13] 


14  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Still  wider  information.  His  intellectual  curi- 
osity was  endless,  though  kept  within  bounds  by 
his  natural  reposefulness.  He  allowed  nothing 
to  claim  his  attention  exclusively.  It  was  his 
aim  to  rise  above  the  merely  transitory  and  fas- 
ten upon  the  permanent.  His  sympathies  were 
too  general  to  be  expended  upon  any  one  phase 
of  individual  effort.  Nor  does  this  imply,  as 
has  sometimes  been  charged,  a  certain  aristo- 
cratic aloofness  in  Goethe's  character.  "It  was 
natural  for  me,"  he  says  in  his  autobiography, 
"to  enter  into  the  conditions  of  other  men,  to 
sympathise  with  every  phase  of  man's  existence 
and  to  find  pleasure  in  sharing  it."  We  feel 
this  universal  sympathy  in  Goethe's  critical 
attitude  toward  notable  literary  efforts  of  what- 
ever kind.  He  approaches  the  most  diverse  sub- 
jects with  equal  interest  and  equal  desire  to  learn 
the  truth.  He  discusses,  as  a  young  man,  the 
poems  of  an  obscure  Polish  Jew  quite  as  philo- 
sophically as  a  scientific  treatise  on  the  clouds, 
or  Shakespeare's  Cynibeline.  No  other  critic 
has  given  to  the  world  such  ripe  and  varied 
results  of  self-culture.  His  literary  susceptibili- 
ties sprang  from  the  ever  deepening  conviction 


GOETHE'S   UNIVERSAL   INTERESTS  1 5 

that  all  mankind  is  related  to  the  truly  educated 
man.  He  adopted  and  expanded  the  saying  of 
Epictetus:  "Never,  in  reply  to  the  question  to 
what  country  you  belong,  say  that  you  are  an 
Athenian  or  a  Corinthian,  but  say  that  you  are 
a  citizen  of  the  world." 

In  this  noble  cosmopolitanism  lay  Goethe's 
supreme  importance  as  literary  critic.  The  love 
of  one's  country  is  natural  to  everybody  and  need 
not  be  inculcated,  but  our  interest  in  other  na- 
tions can  be  strengthened  and  kept  alive  only  by 
active  sympathy  and  deliberate  effort.  "The 
poet,"  said  Goethe  to  Eckermann,  "loves  his 
native  land  as  a  man  and  citizen,  but  the  father- 
land of  his  poetic  powers  and  his  poetic  activity 
is  the  good  and  noble  and  beautiful,  and  that  is 
not  limited  to  any  particular  province  or  any 
particular  country.*  He  seizes  it  and  makes  use 
of  it  wherever  he  finds  it.  He  may  be  likened 
to  the  eagle  who  soars  over  the  land  with  wide 
gaze,  and  is  indifferent  as  to  whether  the  hare 

*LowelI  expresses  the  same  thought  in  the  lines : 
"Where   is   the   true   man's    fatherland? 
Is  it  where  he  by  chance  is  born? 
Doth  not  the  yearning  spirit  scorn 
In  such  scant  borders  to  be  spanned?" 


1 6  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

upon  which  he  suddenly  descends  is  running  on 
Prussian  or  Saxon  soil.  What,  in  reality,  does 
it  mean  to  love  one's  own  country  and  be  patri- 
otic? If  a  poet  has  all  his  life  endeavored  to 
overcome  harmful  prejudices  and  narrow  views, 
to  enlighten  his  countrymen,  improve  their 
tastes,  and  ennoble  their  feelings  and  thoughts, 
could  he  have  been  better  employed,  and  have 
rendered  a  more  patriotic  service?" 

Amid  the  endless  variety  of  subjects  to  which 
Goethe's  critical  sagacity  was  applied  through- 
out life,  his  vision  ever  remained  clear.  He 
discerned  every  object  that  came  within  his  ken, 
and  analyzed  carefully  whatever  appealed  to 
him.  No  other  critic  of  modern  times  inspires 
us  with  the  same  confidence  in  his  competence 
to  speak  of  matters  outside  of  the  chosen  field  in 
which  he  is  the  recognized  master;  no  one  had 
the  same  background  of  ripe  experience,  the 
same  fund  of  wisdom  on  which  he  could  end- 
lessly draw.  No  other  critic  has  so  constantly 
pointed  out,  by  his  own  example,  the  interde- 
pendence of  literature,  art  and  science.  Just  as, 
in  conversation  with  his  friends,  he  passed 
rapidly  from  topic  to  topic,  culling  from  the 


GOETHE'S   UNIVERSAL  INTERESTS  1 7 

many  fields  over  which  his  mind  continually 
ranged,  so  in  his  contact  with  the  affairs  of  life 
he  turned  from  occupation  to  occupation,  "with- 
out haste,  without  rest."  Nothing  can  be  more 
instructive  in  this  respect  than  to  show  how 
many  activities  Goethe  could  crowd  into  a  sin- 
gle year,  although,  as  applied  to  him,  the  word 
"crowded"  seems  ill-chosen,  to  such  a  degree 
was  constant  and  varied  activity  a  necessity  of 
his  nature.  Let  us  take,  at  random,  his  notes 
for  the  year  181 7,  in  the  Annalen. 

"For  more  than  one  reason,"  he  writes,  "I 
had  during  this  year  to  make  a  prolonged  stay 
in  Jena,  and  foreseeing  this,  I  sent  there  some  of 
my  manuscripts,  drawings,  apparatus  and  col- 
lections. But  first  of  all,  I  inspected  the  various 
institutions,  and  finding  much  that  seemed 
important  in  its  bearing  on  the  formation  and 
transformation  of  plants,  I  established  a  sepa- 
rate botanical  museum." 

He  also  rearranged,  during  this  year,  the  uni- 
versity library,  which  was  in  a  state  of  neglect 
and  confusion,  as  well  as  the  veterinary  school. 
Among  the  other  subjects  to  which  he  devoted 
attention  at  the  same  period  were  the  following: 


1 8  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

The  anatomy  of  caterpillars  and  butterflies,  the 
influence  of  Kant  on  his  own  philosophical 
studies,  geology,  mineralogy  and  kindred  sci- 
ences, the  precious  stones  of  Brazil,  the  polari- 
zation of  light  and  chromatics.  Everything 
assumed  additional  importance  in  his  hands 
through  his  tendency  to  connect  the  remote  with 
the  present.  Thus  he  says,  in  the  entry  referred 
to: 

"I  ow^ed  much  enlightenment  in  geology  and 
geography  to  Sorriot's  map  of  the  mountains  of 
Europe;  through  it,  for  example,  the  land  and 
the  soil  of  Spain,  so  troublesome  to  a  command- 
ing general  and  so  favorable  to  guerilla  war- 
fare, became  at  once  clear  to  me.  I  drew  the 
principal  water-sheds  on  my  own  map  of  Spain, 
and  every  campaign,  every  route,  all  the  regular 
and  irregular  army  movements  became  plain 
and  intelligible."  Plastic  art,  as  usual,  claimed 
much  of  his  attention.  His  desire  to  see  the 
Elgin  marbles  at  that  time  was  so  great  that 
"one  fine,  sunny  morning,  starting  to  drive  from 
my  house  without  any  particular  purpose,  I  sud- 
denly turned,  overcome  by  my  desire,  towards 
Rudolstadt,  where  I  refreshed  myself  by  gazing 


GOETHE'S  UNIVERSAL  INTERESTS  1 9 

long  on  the  truly  wonderful  heads  of  Monte 
Cavallo."  He  studied  minutely  Bossi's  work 
on  Leonardo  da  Vinci's  "Last  Supper"  as  well 
as  pen  drawings,  engravings  and  lithographs, 
statuary  and  archaeological  remains,  observed 
the  scattering  of  the  seed  of  the  barberry  flower, 
''casually  made  it  my  business  to  purge  an  old 
edition  of  Thomas  Campanella's  De  sensu  rerum 
from  printer's  errors";  turned  with  pleasure 
''after  dwelling  long  on  clouds  and  their  forms" 
to  a  translation  of  the  Hindu  Megha-Duta,  grew 
"into  the  habit  of  reading  Byron,"  found  in  John 
Hunter's  Life  "a  most  important  monument  of 
a  splendid  mind  which,  without  school  learning, 
developed  nobly  and  powerfully,"  and  con- 
trasted with  it  the  Life  of  Franklin,  which, 
"while  of  the  same  general  character,"  was  "as 
wide  apart  from  it  as  the  heavens."  From 
Elphinstone's  Cabul  and  Raffle's  History  of 
Java  he  "profited  immensely."  Among  other 
books  that  influenced  him  during  the  year  were 
Hermann's  De  Mythologia  Graecorum  anti- 
quissima  and  Raynouard's  Recherches  siir  Van- 
ciennete  de  la  langue  rotnane. 

Such  many-sidedness  implied  necessarily  the 


20  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

ability  to  keep  at  a  distance  subjects  that  had 
ceased  to  interest  him.  Thus  he  rarely  recurred 
to  Rousseau  after  he  reached  maturity,  although 
he  had  been  greatly  influenced  by  him  in  his 
youth.  But  what  had  entered  deeply  into  his 
intellectual  life  became  his  permanent  posses- 
sion. He  never  ceased  to  draw  inspiration  from 
the  ancients,  never  abated  his  admiration  for 
Shakespeare,  or  Moliere,  or  Spinoza. 

Much  has  been  said  of  Goethe's  interest  in 
world-literature.  In  its  essence,  his  effort  to 
foster  an  international  appreciation  of  the  mas- 
ter works  of  all  time  was  a  protest  against 
national  one-sidedness.  But  such  an  apprecia- 
tion was  conditioned  on  critical  capacity  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  commonplace  good  and  the 
commanding  best.  There  is  narrowness  in  too 
wide  a  tolerance  of  mediocrity.  Such  narrow- 
ness was  impossible  to  Goethe.  "In  our  esti- 
mate of  foreign  writers,"  he  says,  "we  must  not 
fasten  upon  national  characteristics  and  imagine 
that  they  are  to  serve  as  our  model.  We  must 
not  single  out  the  Chinese,  or  the  Serbs,  or  Cal- 
deron,  or  the  Nibelungenlied;  but  if  we  look  for 
a  model  of  what  is   really  excellent  we  must 


Goethe's  universal  interests         21 

return  again  and  again  to  the  ancient  Greeks, 
in  whose  works  man  in  all  his  beauty  appears 
to  us.  All  the  rest  is  only  of  a  historic  interest, 
and  we  may  use  what  good  there  is  in  it  as  far 
as  it  serves  our  purpose."  Goethe  disliked  pro- 
vincialism in  literature,  just  as  he  deprecated 
sectarianism  in  religion  and  chauvinism  in  poli- 
tics. International  hatred  was  utterly  incon- 
ceivable to  him.  There  were  certain  patriots 
who  reproached  him  with  not  having  taken  up 
arms  during  the  War  of  Liberation,  or  at  least 
with  not  having  encouraged  it  openly  in  his 
writings. 

"Let  us  not  speak  of  this,"  said  Goethe  on  this 
subject  to  Eckermann;  "we  live  in  a  foolish 
world,  which  does  not  know  what  it  wants;  we 
must  allow  it  to  have  its  say.  How  could  I  take 
up  arms  without  being  impelled  thereto  by 
hatred?  And  how  could  I  hate  at  my  age? 
Had  those  events  happened  when  I  was  t^venty 
years  of  age,  I  should  surely  not  have  been  the 
last  to  take  up  arms,  but  they  took  place  when 
I  was  past  sixty.  Besides,  we  cannot  all  serve 
our  country  in  the  same  way.  Each  of  us  must 
do  the  best  God  has  enabled  him  to  do.     I  have 


22  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

toiled  hard  enough  for  half  a  century.  I  may 
say  that  in  those  matters  which  nature  has  fitted 
me  to  do  as  my  daily  task,  I  have  allowed  myself 
no  rest  or  relaxation  by  day  or  night;  I  have 
always  toiled,  studied,  and  aimed  at  progress  as 
far  and  as  well  as  I  could.  If  each  of  us  can 
say  the  same  thing  of  himself,  it  will  be  well 
with  all  of  us.  .  .  . 

"To  write  military  songs,  sitting  in  my  room 
— that  would  indeed  have  suited  my  nature! 
Camping  in  the  open  air,  by  night,  with  the 
horses  of  the  enemy's  outposts  neighing  near 
me,  that  would  have  been  more  to  my  liking. 
But  this  was  not  my  affair,  nor  the  object  of  my 
life.  That  was  the  business  of  Theodor 
Korner;  his  martial  songs  suited  his  nature  per- 
fectly. But  war  is  foreign  to  me,  and  I  am 
without  military  ambition;  martial  songs  would 
therefore  have  been  merely  a  mask,  which  would 
have  ill  fitted  me. 

"I  have  never  affected  anything  in  my  poetry. 
I  have  never  thought  and  expressed  anything 
that  did  not  live  within  me  and  inspire  me  irre- 
sistibly. I  have  never  written  love  songs  except 
when  I  loved;  how  then  could  I  have  written 


GOETHE'S  UNIVERSAL   INTERESTS  23 

songs  of  hatred  without  hating?  And  between 
ourselves,  I  never  hated  the  French,  although 
I  thanked  God  when  we  were  rid  of  them. 
How  could  I,  to  whom  the  question  of  culture 
and  barbarism  alone  is  all-important,  hate  a 
nation  which  is  among  the  most  cultured  of  the 
world,  and  to  which  I  owe  so  great  a  part  of  my 
own  culture?  National  hatred  is  indeed  a 
peculiar  thing.  It  is  always  found  most  pro- 
nounced and  violent  where  civilization  is  low- 
est; but  there  is  a  stage  of  culture  where  it 
vanishes  altogether,  where  one  stands,  so  to  say, 
above  all  nations,  and  feels  the  happiness  and 
the  sorrows  of  a  neighboring  people  as  much  as 
if  they  were  a  part  of  one's  own.  This  degree 
of  culture  was  in  accord  with  my  nature,  and  I 
had  become  confirmed  in  these  views  before  I 
reached  my  sixtieth  year." 

The  creation  of  a  world-literature  was,  in 
Goethe's  eyes,  the  natural  result  of  an  intelli- 
gent and  humane  interest  in  other  nations  than 
one's  own.  "It  is  very  gratifying,"  he  said, 
"that  the  close  relations  existing  between 
French,  English  and  Germans  make  it  possible 
for  these  nations  to  correct  each  other.     We, 


24  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

perhaps,  can  appreciate  Shakespeare  and  Byron 
better  than  the  English." 

Numerous  passages  scattered  throughout 
Goethe's  writings  testify  to  his  appreciation  of 
the  peculiar  importance  of  English  literature. 
He  often  laid  stress  on  the  value  of  becoming 
familiar  with  the  English  language  and  thus 
with  the  character  of  the  British  nation.  He 
wrote  to  Countess  O'Donnell,  July  24,  1813:  "I 
congratulate  you  sincerely  on  your  interest  in  the 
English  language.  Its  literature  offers  the  vast- 
est treasures,  and  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  appre- 
ciate all  its  wealth  on  first  approaching  it." 

In  one  of  his  minor  scientific  papers,  entitled 
Materials  for  a  History  of  the  Color  Theory,  he 
remarks,  with  reference  to  Newton's  person- 
ality: "What  chiefly  characterizes  the  English, 
and  cannot  be  too  highly  praised,  is  that  they 
make  it  possible  for  so  many  sound  and  straight- 
forward individuals  to  develop  themselves,  each 
in  his  own  way,  while  at  the  same  time  serving 
the  public  and  the  commonwealth.  This  is  an 
advantage  which  perhaps  no  other  nation  pos- 
sesses, at  least  not  to  the  same  extent."  Else- 
where, in  these  notes  on  scientific  subjects,  he 


GOETHE'S   UNIVERSAL  INTERESTS  25 

says:  "The  English  possess,  perhaps  above  most 
nations,  the  ability  to  impress  themselves  upon 
foreigners.  Their  personal  repose,  precision, 
industry,  firmness  of  opinion  and  complacency, 
form  an  almost  unapproachable  model  of  what 
everybody  would  wish  to  attain." 

Goethe's  critical  activity,  strictly  speaking, 
extended  over  sixty  years.  He  began  to  write 
for  the  Frankfurter  Gelehrte  Anzeigen  in  1772, 
when  twenty-three  years  of  age,  and  his  earliest 
contributions  showed  that  seriousness  and  matu- 
rity which  characterized  all  his  critical  work. 
He  wrote  on  Sulzer's  Theory  of  the  Fine  Arts, 
on  Homer  and  Shakespeare,  on  the  Truths  of 
Revelation,  on  Paradise  and  Eternity,  on  Lava- 
ter's  Sermons,  on  a  work  about  Turkish  Laws, 
on  a  treatise  concerning  the  Characteristics  of 
the  Principal  European  Nations,  on  a  scientific 
System  of  Nature,  etc.  Of  greater  importance 
were  his  subsequent  contributions,  on  a  vast 
range  of  literary,  scientific,  linguistic,  and 
aesthetic  subjects,  which  appeared  in  Wieland's 
Merkur,  in  the  Propylden,  in  Kunst  und  Alter- 
tlium,  and  the  Jenaische  AUgcmeine  Literatiir- 
zeitutifj.     Painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  and 


26  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

the  drama  at  all  times  claimed  his  critical  atten- 
tion. In  a  larger  sense  his  entire  life  was 
devoted  to  the  exposition  of  his  views  on  these 
subjects,  and  his  critical  activity  was  only 
varied,  but  not  interrupted,  by  his  creative 
work.  His  Autobiography  (Dichtung  und 
PVahrheit)  and  Wilhelm  Meister  contain  liter- 
ary and  philosophical  criticism  of  the  highest 
value,  and  we  must  go  not  only  to  Faust,  but  also 
to  the  Elective  Affinities,  and  even  to  Tasso  and 
Iphigenia,  if  we  would  have  full  insight  into 
Goethe's  philosophical  and  critical  methods. 
His  Annalen,  and  his  correspondence  with 
Schiller,  with  the  Humboldts,  with  Zelter,  and 
with  other  friends,  are  inexhaustible  critical 
repositories,  but  even  these  are  surpassed  in 
value  by  his  talks  with  Eckermann.  In  Ecker- 
mann's  Conversations  with  Goethe  the  great 
thinker  stands  before  us  in  all  the  benignant 
wisdom  of  his  last  decade.  Nowhere  else  does 
he  so  fully  impress  us  with  the  comprehensive- 
ness of  his  knowledge  and  judgment. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Goethe's  attitude 
toward  life  and  literature  that  even  in  his  earl- 
iest book  notices  philosophical   reflection   pre- 


GOETHE'S  UNIVERSAL   INTERESTS  27 

dominates  over  critical  analysis.  He  was  never 
a  professional  critic  in  the  usual  sense  of  the 
word.  Books  of  doubtful  value  he  scarcely  ever 
read  or  alluded  to,  either  in  writing  or  in  con- 
versation; but  he  recurred  again  and  again  to 
the  excellent,  expatiating  upon  previously 
uttered  thoughts  that  seemed  to  him  to  require 
amplification,  and  comparing  the  great  writers 
and  artists  of  one  nation  with  those  of  another. 
The  French  are  contrasted  with  the  ancients, 
Beranger  suggests  Horace  or  Hafiz;  from  Vol- 
taire and  priestcraft  we  pass  to  the  fossiliferous 
formation  of  some  German  mountain.  Every- 
where we  see  the  hand  of  wisdom  pointing  to 
some  new  outlook  upon  the  world. 

Of  great  intrinsic  importance  are  Goethe's 
reflections  called  forth  by  the  activity  of  the 
French  periodical,  Le  Globe,  to  which,  in  the 
last  years  of  his  life,  before  it  became  an  organ 
of  Saint-Simonism,  he  paid  much  attention. 
The  writers  in  the  Globe,  among  whom  was 
Sainte-Beuve,  appeared  to  him  to  have  grasped 
clearly  the  meaning  of  his  world-literature,  and 
the  admiration  bestowed  by  able  commentators 
in  that  periodical  on  his  own  dramatic  works 


28  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

filled  him  with  genuine  pleasure.  In  addition 
to  the  Globe  he  read  with  interest  several  of  the 
most  important  British  reviews,  whose  contribu- 
tions likewise  testified  to  the  spread  of  inter- 
national relations  in  literature.  He  anticipated, 
however,  the  objections  to  an  indiscriminate  and 
artificial  identification  of  literary  interests 
among  the  nations  of  the  world,  and  laid  the 
greatest  stress  on  the  need  of  serious  individual 
effort  and  the  cultivation  of  one's  native  talent. 
"Vast  as  the  world  is,"  he  wrote,  "it  is  but 
an  enlarged  fatherland,  and,  if  we  look  at  the 
matter  closely,  it  cannot  give  us  more  than  our 
native  soil  can  furnish.  What  pleases  the  mul- 
titude is  sure  to  gain  unbounded  popularity  and, 
as  we  see,  spreads  to  the  furthest  countries  and 
to  every  clime;  but  what  is  serious  and  impor- 
tant is  less  certain  of  such  a  result.  Neverthe- 
less, those  who  devote  themselves  to  higher 
ideals  and  to  what  is  productive  in  the  best  sense 
will  henceforth  come  into  more  rapid  and  closer 
contact.  There  are  in  every  part  of  the  world 
men  interested  in  what  has  been  long  established 
and  must  serve  as  a  base  for  the  true  progress 
of  humanity.     But  their  ways  are  not  the  ways 


GOETHE'S   UNIVERSAL  INTERESTS  29 

of  the  average  man,  nor  can  their  pace 
be  followed;  those  who  live  for  the  enjoy- 
ment of  life  demand  a  more  rapid  rate 
of  progress,  and  hence  refuse  to  be  led 
and  to  aid  in  the  cause  which  they  ought  to 
serve.  The  serious-minded,  therefore,  must 
form  a  quiet  and  self-contained  community;  it 
were  useless  to  oppose  the  broad  current  of  the 
hour,  but  it  is  well  to  maintain  courageously 
one's  firm  attitude  until  the  flood  has  passed. 
The  principal  consolation  and  encouragement 
that  such  men  will  find  is  that  what  is  true  is 
also  useful.  .  .  .  Every  nation  has  peculiarities 
which  distinguish  it  from  other  nations,  and  it 
is  these  characteristics  which  mutually  attract 
and  repel.  An  inner  peculiarity  is  in  its  out- 
ward manifestation  often  very  obnoxious  to 
another  nation,  or  if  not  so,  appears  at  least 
ridiculous.  For  these  reasons  we  always  appre- 
ciate every  nation  less  fully  than  it  deserves. 
The  inner  traits  are  neither  known  nor  recog- 
nized, not  only  by  strangers,  but  by  the  very 
nation  itself.  The  real  nature,  with  nations  as 
with  individuals,  is  beneath  the  surface,  and  we 
are  astonished  at  its  sudden  manifestation." 


30  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Goethe  often  spoke  in  a  similar  strain  about 
the  importance  of  looking  at  life  and  literature 
from  a  wider  point  of  view  than  the  purely 
national  one;  thus  he  said,  in  a  review  of  Serb 
folk-songs:  "The  purely  human  repeats  itself 
among  all  nations,  but  it  inspires  no  real  inter- 
est when  it  appears  in  a  foreign  garb  or  under 
a  foreign  sky;  what  is  particularly  characteris- 
tic of  every  nation  produces  only  a  strange  and 
often  a  disagreeable  impression,  like  everything 
peculiar  the  proper  significance  of  which  we 
have  not  grasped,  and  which  we  have  therefore 
not  yet  learned  to  understand." 

Goethe  often  held  up  the  directness  of  the 
English  style  as  a  model  to  his  countrymen.  He 
said  to  Eckermann: 

"On  the  whole,  philosophical  speculations  are 
injurious  to  the  Germans,  as  they  infuse  into 
their  literary  style  something  vague,  intangible 
and  obscure.  The  stronger  their  adherence  to 
certain  philosophic  schools,  the  worse  they 
write.  Those  Germans,  however,  who,  as  busi- 
ness-men and  men  of  the  world,  look  only  to  the 
practical  side  of  things,  write  best.  Schiller's 
style  is  most  brilliant  and  impressive  when  he 


GOETHE  S  UNIVERSAL   INTERESTS  3  I 

ceases  to  philosophize,  as  I  see  in  his  letters, 
which  I  am  just  now  looking  over,  and  which 
are  of  the  highest  importance.  There  are  also 
gifted  German  women  who  write  admirably, 
and,  indeed,  they  are  in  this  respect  superior  to 
some  of  our  famous  male  authors. 

"The  English,  as  a  rule,  write  uniformly  well, 
being  born  orators  and  men  of  practical  sense, 
busy  with  realities.  The  French,  in  their  style, 
are  true  to  their  general  character.  Their  nature 
is  social,  and  they  never  forget  what  is  due  to 
the  public  whom  they  address.  They  endeavor 
to  be  clear,  so  as  to  convince  the  reader,  and 
agreeable,  so  as  to  please  him. 

"All  in  all,  the  style  of  an  author  is  the  true 
image  of  his  mind.  He  who  would  write 
clearly,  ought  first  to  think  clearly,  and  who- 
ever would  have  a  grand  style  must  first  have  a 
grand  character." 

Genius,  in  Goethe's  conception  of  the  term, 
implied  character.  He  thus  expresses  himself 
to  Eckermann  as  to  the  harm  done  by  writers 
who  lacked,  in  their  very  nature,  the  elements 
of  real  greatness:  "Want  of  character,  in  indi- 
vidual investigators  and  writers  is  the  source 


32  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

of  all  the  evils  in  our  recent  literature.  In  criti- 
cism especially,  this  defect  produces  great 
harm."  He  sighed  for  another  Lessing,  for 
one  of  his  character  and  firmness.  The  greatest 
ability,  if  not  employed  in  the  pursuit  of  high 
aims,  merely  repelled  him.  Two  months  before 
his  death,  in  speaking  to  Eckermann  about  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  great  productivity,  he  remarked: 
''Can  a  writer  help  deteriorating  and  ruining 
even  a  very  great  talent,  if  he  has  the  hardihood 
to  write  in  a  single  year  two  tragedies  and  a 
novel,  and  if,  moreover,  he  seems  to  write  only 
in  order  to  amass  a  great  deal  of  money?  I  by 
no  means  blame  him  for  trying  to  become  rich, 
nor  for  seeking  the  fame  of  the  day,  but  if  he 
wishes  to  be  remembered  by  posterity  he  must 
begin  to  write  less  and  to  work  more." 

In  his  teachings  as  in  his  practice,  Goethe 
enforced  the  need  of  keeping  at  a  distance  the 
vulgar  which  threatens  to  enthrall  us  all.  "Men 
are  so  prone,"  says  Wilhelm  Meister,  ''to  give 
themselves  up  to  the  commonplace  and  vulgar, 
the  mind  and  the  feelings  so  easily  become  cal- 
lous to  the  beautiful  and  the  perfect,  that  one 
ought  to  try  in  every  way  possible  to  retain  a 


GOETHE'S   UNIVERSAL  INTERESTS  33 

taste  for  higher  things.  Such  enjoyments  no  one 
can  wholly  do  without.  Our  lack  of  familiarity 
with  what  is  really  excellent  is  the  explanation 
why  so  many  take  pleasure  in  what  is  silly  and 
insipid,  merely  because  it  is  new.  We  ought  to 
form  the  habit  of  listening  every  day  to  some 
pretty  song,  reading  a  fine  poem,  looking  at  a 
beautiful  picture  and,  if  possible,  saying  a  few 
sensible  things." 


GRILLPARZER'S    ORIGINALITY 

Grillparzer's  critical  writings  are  virtually 
unknown  to  English  readers.  Even  in  Ger- 
many his  fame  as  a  dramatist  has  completely 
overshadowed  every  other  phase  of  his  intellec- 
tual activity.  George  Saintsbury  and  Edward 
Dowden  were  the  first  English  literary  authori- 
ties who  grasped  the  significance  of  Grillpar- 
zer's critical  utterances.  Saintsbury  remarks,  in 
his  History  of  Criticism:  "I  am  told  by  persons 
who  know  more  about  the  matter  than  I  do,  that 
Grillparzer  was  a  remarkable  playwright;  I  am 
sure  that  he  is  a  remarkable  critic." 

Grillparzer  was  all  his  life  a  lover  of  good 
books  of  many  nations.  He  studied  Greek  and 
Spanish  dramatic  literature,  in  particular,  more 
constantly  than  did  Goethe,  Sainte-Beuve,  or 
Lowell.  For  the  portrayal  of  his  characters  and 
the  development  of  his  plots,  he  went  to  no 
source  but  his  imagination :  for  his  literary  back- 
ground he  turned  to  volume  after  volume  of 
recondite  lore.  And  with  all  his  ease  in  com- 
position— after  the  slow  brooding  time  was  over 
— only  the  constant  exercise  of  severe  self-criti- 

[34] 


GRILLPARZER'S  ORIGINALITY  35 

cism  gave  him  that  unerring  felicity  of  phrase, 
that  intimate  adaptation  of  word  to  mood  and 
action  which  marks  the  great  literary  artist. 

As  I  have  said  elsewhere*:  "Jotted  down 
mostly  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  with  no 
thought  of  publication,  and  covering,  as  they 
do,  practically  the  entire  period  of  his  intellec- 
tual activity,  his  critical  remarks  are  all  the 
more  interesting  from  their  momentary  point  of 
view  and  not  infrequent  contradictions — the 
result  of  riper  judgment  and  an  invariable 
desire  to  be  just.  His  lifelong  study  of  the 
Greek  dramatists  is  evidenced  by  a  weighty 
paper  on  the  significance  of  the  chorus  in  the 
ancient  tragedy,  and  particularly  by  numerous 
passages  on  Euripides,  his  favorite  author  among 
the  ancients.  An  entire  volume  of  the  Cotta 
edition  of  Grillparzer's  works  is  given  up  to  his 
contributions  to  the  study  of  the  Spanish  theatre, 
covering  hundreds  of  plays.  Of  the  master- 
pieces of  the  Spanish  dramatists  Grillparzer 
might  often  have  said,  in  his  moments  of  de- 
spondency, what  Lowell  wrote  after  the  death 
of  his  second  wife:  'I  have  at  last  found  some- 

*Fraiis  Grillparzer  and  the  Austrian  Drama. 


36  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

thing  I  can  read — Calderon.'  Grillparzer  stud- 
ied Calderon,  and  even  more  Lope  de  Vega, 
with  loving  minuteness.  To  no  other  writer  did 
he  turn  more  frequently  for  inspiration  than  to 
the  latter." 

While  it  may  be  said  that  Grillparzer  was  a 
critic  primarily  for  his  own  creative  purposes, 
his  subjective  attitude  merely  heightens  the 
clearness  and  precision  of  his  utterances,  which 
serve  all  the  purposes  of  the  most  exacting  objec- 
tive criticism.  Neither  Goethe,  nor  Sainte- 
Beuve,  nor  Lowell,  possessed  the  gift  of  self- 
criticism  to  the  same  degree  as  Grillparzer.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  verbal  blemishes 
— his  Austriacisms  and  apparent  occasional 
lapses  in  grammatical  construction — are  not  the 
result  of  direct  intention,  rather  than  of  acci- 
dental carelessness;  what  is  certain  is  that  the 
consistency  and  individuality  of  his  characters 
bear  the  imprint  of  that  critical  habit  which  he 
turned  against  himself  as  remorselessly  as  he  did 
against  others.  It  is  a  curious  and  most  instruc- 
tive fact  that  every  one  of  Grillparzer's  great 
dramas  has  been  pronounced  his  masterpiece  by 
some  competent  critic— a  singular  phenomenon 


grillparzer's  originality  37 

in  literary  criticism  which,  if  it  does  not  demon- 
strate the  caprice  of  critics,  proves  that  every- 
one of  these  plays  possesses  merits  of  the  very 
highest  order.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  as 
much  can  be  said  of  the  total  output  of  any  other 
great  dramatist  of  modern  times.  Grillparzer 
analyzed  his  own  works  sometimes  morbidly, 
but,  as  a  rule,  dispassionately  and  in  a  spirit  of 
philosophical  and  modest  resignation.  What  he 
says,  in  his  fragmentary  autobiography,  con- 
cerning the  right  of  the  general  public  to  pro- 
nounce judgment  on  the  dramatic  worth  of  a 
play  is  as  sane  criticism  as  has  ever  been  uttered 
on  the  subject.  Referring  to  his  Medea  trilogy, 
he  remarked : 

"I  have  always  attached  great  value  to  the 
judgment  of  the  public.  As  regards  the  concep- 
tion of  his  play  the  dramatic  poet  must  consult 
his  own  judgment,  but  as  to  whether  in  its  exe- 
cution he  has  depicted  human  nature  as  we  find 
it  in  life,  the  public  alone,  as  representing  human 
nature,  can  tell  him.  The  public  is  no  judge,  but 
a  jury;  it  issues  its  verdict  in  the  shape  of  ap- 
proval or  disapproval.  Its  right  to  judge  is' 
based  not  on  knowledge  of  the  law,  but  on  spon- 


38  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

taneous  and  natural  feeling.  Of  this  natural- 
ness, which  in  northern  Germany  has  been 
pushed  into  the  background  by  pseudo-culture 
and  blind  imitation,  there  still  exists  in  Austria 
a  considerable  remnant,  combined  with  a  sus- 
ceptibility which,  by  proper  guidance  on  the 
part  of  the  poet,  can  be  heightened  to  an  incredi- 
ble degree.  The  pleasure  of  such  a  public  may 
not  prove  much,  for  it  wishes,  above  all,  to  be 
amused,  but  its  disapproval  is  in  the  highest 
degree  instructive.  In  this  case  all  it  pro- 
nounced was  a  succes  d'estime/' 

His  autobiography  closed  with  this  reference 
to  his  superb  drama,  Des  Meeres  iind  der  Liebe 
We  II  en : 

"I  had  found  a  new  dramatic  subject,  or 
rather  an  old  one,  which  I  took  up  again:  Hero 
and  Leander.  A  beautiful  woman  tempted  me 
to  represent  her  outward  form,  even  if  not  her 
real  being,  as  she  passes  through  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  fortune.  The  somewhat  affected  title, 
Des  Meeres  und  der  Liebe  Wellen  (The  Waves 
of  the  Sea  and  of  Love) ,  was  to  point  at  the  out- 
set to  the  romantic,  or  rather  purely  human, 
treatment  of  the  ancient  legend.     My  interest 


GRILLPARZER'S  ORIGINALITY  39 

centered  in  the  principal  character,  and  there- 
fore I  crowded  the  other  persons — nay,  toward 
the  end,  the  development  of  the  story  itself — 
further  into  the  background  than  was  really 
just.  And  yet  it  was  these  last  acts  that  I  wrote 
with  the  deepest  sentiment,  the  outcome  of  my 
interest  in  the  heroine.  That  the  fourth  act 
bored  the  spectators  to  some  extent  lay  partly 
in  my  intention,  .  .  .  but  there  are  also  other 
things  in  the  play  that  ought  to  have  been  dif- 
ferent." Two  weeks  after  the  first  performance 
of  Des  Meeres  und  der  Liebe  TVellen  he  penned 
the  following  criticism  of  the  play: 

"On  the  fifth  of  this  month  (April,  1831) 
Hero  und  Leander  was  performed.  No  suc- 
cess. The  first  three  acts  were  vociferously 
applauded,  but  the  last  two  were  passed  over  in 
inattentive  silence.  It  is  sad  indeed  that  the 
voice  of  the  public  coincides  so  fully  with  my 
own  doubts.  The  fifth  act  is  unfortunately  only 
too  effective,  too  theatrical  (for  which  reason 
I  always  wanted  to  change  it)  ;  it  evidently  suf- 
fered from  the  ineffectiveness  of  the  fourth  act, 
for  it  is  impossible  to  produce  an  effect  upon  a 
public  that  has  lost  its  interest.    Curious  indeed! 


40  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

I  wrote  just  this  fourth  act  with  the  deepest 
feeling;  nowhere  did  I  enter  so  closely  into  the 
situation,  and  I  originally  considered  it  par- 
ticularly good;  but  when  I  rewrote  the  play,  a 
year  later,  I  could  not  any  more  find  the  key  to 
it.  There  is  evidently  too  little  development  in 
the  whole  of  the  play;  it  is  fragmentary  and  the 
result  rather  of  general  enthusiasm  than  of  par- 
ticular interest  in  the  subject  itself — in  other 
words,  it  is  more  of  a  sketch  than  of  a  picture. 
I  had  set  myself  a  tremendous  task.  Had  I  suc- 
ceeded, the  result  would  have  been  a  great  gain 
for  poetry.  But  I  did  not  succeed,  and  yet,  and 
yet!  If  I  can  succeed  in  keeping  myself,  by  a 
few  successful  plays,  within  the  ranks  of  the 
poets  who  are  to  last,  there  may  come  a  time 
when  the  world  will  recognize  the  value  of  this 
fourth  act,  even  though  I  only  half  attained 
what  I  aimed  at." 

While  conceding  to  the  public  the  role  of  a 
jury,  as  far  as  the  theatrical  effectiveness  of  a 
play  is  concerned,  he  was,  as  we  have  seen,  far 
from  granting  it  the  rights  of  a  judge  in  purely 
literary  matters.  Moreover,  much  as  he  appre- 
ciated  in    theory,    and   illustrated    in   practice, 


grillparzer's  originality  41 

spontaneity  of  sentiment  and  naturalness  of  ex- 
pression ("Die  Natiirlichkeit  der  Empfin- 
dung")  he  did  not  believe  in  "natural  poets," 
and  distrusted  the  ability  of  the  people,  as  such, 
to  product  a  literary  work  of  genius.  He  depre- 
cated the  glorification  of  folk-lore  by  literary 
historians  and  sought  in  every  genuine  poetic 
work,  whether  epic  or  lyric,  for  the  individual 
author.  The  anonymous  multitude  never  cre- 
ated anything  great,  he  said,  and  added: 

"Since  Hegel  threw  doubt  on  the  validity  of 
individual  talent  and  every  wooden  pedant 
found  it  convenient  to  deny  the  prerogative  of 
intellectual  endowment,  the  theory  of  poetry 
without  poets  was  established.  Epics  were  sup- 
posed to  have  been  the  outcome  of  simple  folk- 
songs,  which  some  one  from  the  rabble  had 
made  and  some  Middle-High  German  pedant 
had  put  together  at  haphazard.  In  this  way  the 
entire  nation  was  elevated  to  the  rank  of  poets, 
and  according  to  this  theory  of  folk-poesy,  there 
is  no  reason  why  every  writer  of  poetic  doggerel 
of  our  own  day  should  not  consider  himself  as 
laying  the  foundations  for  future  Iliads  and 
Odysseys." 


42  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Grillparzer  recognized  in  the  Nibelungen- 
lied  a  mysterious  work  of  great  power  and  won- 
derful poetic  charm,  but  to  believe,  he  said, 
''that  such  a  poem  could  have  come  out  of  the 
mouth  of  the  common  people  is  to  assume  the 
impossible." 

Contrary  to  Goethe,  who  admired  artistic 
perfection  in  literature  regardless  of  the  genre, 
and  ranked  Beranger  as  highly  as  he  did  Byron 
or  Moliere,  Grillparzer  assumed  a  certain  gra- 
dation of  values  in  literary  form  and  expression. 
To  epigrams  and  satires  he  assigned  the  lowest 
rank,  to  the  drama  the  highest.  The  distinction 
is  significant.  Grillparzer  disclaimed  for  him- 
self a  place  by  the  side  of  the  greatest  dramatic 
poets,  and  he  set  little  store  by  the  multitude  of 
epigrammatic  flings  (admirable  satires  of  their 
kind)  in  which,  throughout  his  life,  he  attacked 
bureaucratic  stupidity  or  retaliated  against 
political  and  literary  persecution.  Like  his 
critical  utterances,  these  epigrams  slumbered  in 
the  recesses  of  his  writing-desk. 

Like  Goethe,  Grillparzer  could  appreciate 
the  critical  standards  of  many  nations,  as 
embodied  in  works  of  great  literary  excellence, 


GRILLPARZER'S  ORIGINALITY  43 

and  Puritanism  in  literary  matters  was  as  foreign 
to  him  as  to  Goethe.  But  he  had  a  sovereign 
contempt,  exemplified  in  his  own  literary  prac- 
tices, for  offences  against  established  aesthetic 
standards.     He  wrote  of  Swift: 

"Have  the  publishers  of  Swift's  works  done 
well  in  including  therein  those  obscene  riddles 
the  composing  of  which  gave  the  Dean  of  St. 
Patrick,  then  nearly  sixty  years  of  age,  so  much 
pleasure?  I  believe  they  have.  For  in  spite  of 
the  inexpressible  pain  these  riddles  have  given 
me,  they  embody  a  great  lesson.  That  is  to  say, 
they  show  to  what  even  the  highest  intellectual 
gifts  finally  lead  if  unaccompanied  by  genuine 
warmth  of  heart.  But  my  disappointment  was 
none  the  less  real,  for  I  was  on  the  point  of  learn- 
ing to  admire  Swift,  in  spite  of  all  his  faults." 

Much  as  he  loved  the  ancients,  Grillparzer 
was  far  from  being  their  imitator.  Like  Goethe, 
he  believed  that  the  poet  must  in  his  works 
reflect  his  inner  life.  When  reproached  with 
having  made  his  Sappho  express  un-Greek  sen- 
timents, he  merely  remarked  that  he  had  writ- 
ten his  play  for  Germans  and  not  for  Athenians. 
He  made  the  difference  between  the  life  of  the 


44  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Athenians  and  our  own  clear  in  another  critical 
utterance.  Even  in  his  Greek  plays  he  had 
chiefly  his  Austrian  audience  in  mind. 

One  quality,  above  all  others,  Grillparzer 
demanded  of  every  poet,  no  matter  how  great 
and  individual  his  gifts — concentration  of  all  his 
powers.  Just  as  Goethe  admonished  the  poets 
to  "command  poesy,"  so  Grillparzer  showed  by 
his  own  example  that  only  he  can  be  successful 
in  literature  who  is  master  of  himself  and  of  his 
surroundings  as  well  as  of  his  moods.  He  had 
no  patience  with  those  critical  theories  which  see 
in  the  works  of  a  genius  the  results  of  his  time 
and  the  conditions  of  his  milieu.  "The  progress 
of  art,"  he  said,  "depends  upon  talent  and  not 
upon  historical  events.  Goethe  would  have 
been  the  same  great  poet  if  there  never  had  been 
a  Frederick  the  Great,  and  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, which  surely  was  powerful  enough  in  its 
workings,  has  not  produced  a  single  poet." 

Professor  Auguste  Ehrhard,  the  author  of  an 
admirable  French  work  on  Grillparzer,  crowned 
by  the  French  Academy,  remarks  that  in  a 
period  of  great  literary  unrest  in  Germany  Grill- 
parzer's    aesthetic    convictions    never    wavered. 


GRILLPARZER'S  ORIGINALITY  45 

"He  was  guided,"  says  Ehrhard,  ''by  the  artistic 
sense  inherent  in  the  Austrians,  as  well  as  by  his 
own  poetic  instinct."  His  aesthetic  education 
was  of  the  broadest,  and  comprised  a  knowledge 
of  music  such  as  Sainte-Beuve  and  Lowell 
lacked,  and  Goethe  never  fully  acquired. 
Goethe,  indeed,  was  in  his  youth  a  performer 
of  some  skill  on  several  musical  instruments  and 
sought  in  his  old  age,  through  his  association 
with  Zelter,  to  acquaint  himself  with  certain 
musical  theories,  and  Lowell  recognized  (in  his 
essay  on  Pope)  the  value  of  music  to  a  poet. 
"Milton,  Collins  and  Gray,"  he  remarks,  "our 
three  great  masters  of  harmony,  were  all  musi- 
cians." With  Grillparzer,  music  was  part  of 
his  very  nature,  and  his  familiarity  with  this  art 
entered  into  all  his  esthetic  theories. 

The  following  extract  will,  to  some  extent, 
give  an  idea  of  the  comprehensiveness  and 
originality  of  a  writer  whom  his  French  biog- 
rapher considers  the  greatest  critic  that  Ger- 
many has  produced  since  the  days  of  Lessing. 
As  a  characteristic  specimen  of  Grillparzer's 
breadth  of  view  it  will  suffice  to  point  to  his 
appreciation  of  Ghiberti,  penned  after  reading  a 


46  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

German  translation  of  his   Chronicle  of  Flor- 
ence: 

'^I  must  confess  that  few  books  have  made  so 
deep  an  impression  upon  me.     While  Benve- 
nuto  Cellini's  Life  shows  us  the  heaven-storming 
Titan,  who,  intent  upon  his  work  in  his  inex- 
haustible power,   regards  all  those  beside  and 
around  him  as  so  many  disturbing  and  antagon- 
izing   opponents,     Ghiberti's    gentle,    perhaps 
somewhat  feminine,  nature  clings  with  a  glori- 
fying love  to  his  contemporaries,  and  affords  us 
a  picture  of  days  which  had  no  equal  in  any 
other  epoch  in  art.     The  Michael-Angelo-like 
Brunelleschi,   the  joyous   Donatello,   Masaccio, 
Filippo   Lippi — monk   and   painter — the   won- 
derful Leonardo  da  Vinci,  in  his  early  begin- 
nings,   and   the   peaceful   painter  of   Fiesole — 
briefly  mentioned  yet  throwing  over  us,   as  it 
were,  a  shimmer  of  his  angelic  halo — added  to 
all  these  a  world  of  artists  of  the  second  and 
third  rank,  whom  we  see  not  only  in  sharply 
defined  outline,  but  in  all  their  relations  of  life, 
and  in  situations  such  as  to-day  are  found  only 
in  novels,   but  which   those  days  produced   in 
abundance — what   an    age!     There    are    entire 


GRILLPARZER'S  ORIGINALITY  47 

countries  whose  history  from  the  creation  of  the 
world  to  the  year  of  our  Lord  1833  offers  not 
half  as  much  of  real  interest  as  little  Florence 
under  the  Medici.  Truly,  he  who  espies  at  a 
distance  an  Italian  in  the  street  ought  to  uncover 
his  head,  and  say  to  himself:  'Here  is  one  of 
those  who  are  the  fathers  of  modern  civiliza- 
tion.' I  do  not  doubt  that  many  will  ridicule 
such  an  idea.  Let  those  not  read  Ghiberti's 
book;  all  others  will  enjoy  it." 

Grillparzer,  like  Goethe,  capable  of  the 
highest  imaginative  flights,  guarded  with  equal 
jealousy  his  critical  independence.  With  all  his 
admiration  for  Euripides,  Lope,  Shakespeare, 
and  Goethe  himself,  he  was,  as  it  were,  con- 
stantly on  the  guard  against  their  overmaster- 
ing power.  When  starting  on  a  journey  on  one 
occasion,  he  asked  himself:  "What  books  am  I 
to  take  with  me  for  my  poetic  flight?  Little, 
and  yet  much!  Herodotus  and  Plutarch,  besides 
the  two  Spanish  dramatists.  And  not  Shake- 
speare? No,  not  Shakespeare,  although  he  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  product  of  the  modern  age. 
Not  Shakespeare!  He  tyrannizes  over  my  intel- 
lect, and  I  want  to  remain  free.     I  thank  God 


48  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

that  he  exists,  and  that  I  have  the  good  fortune 
to  read  him  and  re-read  him,  and  absorb  him. 
But  now  I  shall  try  to  forget  him.  The  ancients 
invigorate  me,  the  Spaniards  incite  me  to  pro- 
ductiveness; but  the  former  are  too  remote,  the 
latter  too  purely  human — with  their  blemishes 
amid  their  greatest  beauties,  and  their  often 
exaggerated  mannerisms — to  influence  deeply 
my  nature,  my  individual  way  of  looking  at 
things.  But  the  giant  Shakespeare  usurps  the 
powers  of  Nature,  whose  most  magnificent 
mouth-piece  he  was,  and  whosoever  surrenders 
himself  to  him  will  forever  have  to  go  to  him 
for  an  answer  to  any  question  which  he  may 
wish  to  ask  Nature  herself." 


SAINTE-BEUVE'S   UNIQUE  POSITION 

Within  the  whole  range  of  literature  no 
country  has  produced  a  critic  like  Sainte-Beuve. 
He  is  unique  in  vastness  of  achievement,  in  the 
erudition  and  industry  he  brought  to  his  task, 
as  well  as  in  the  unfailing  grace,  apparently  so 
spontaneous  and  yet  the  result  of  unremitting 
effort,  which  illumines  his  pages.  French  lit- 
erature in  its  entirety  lay  open  before  him;  he 
was  at  home  with  philosophers  and  journalists, 
with  historians  and  scientists,  with  society  and 
life  in  all  their  shades  and,  often  enough,  their 
shadows;  with  great  and  little  men  and  women, 
with  all  prominent  figures  in  the  annals  of 
French  history;  he  analyzed  character  as  pro- 
foundly as  he  did  books;  and  while  he  gave  to 
France  all  the  resources  of  an  eminently  French 
intellect,  he  spoke  of  her  literature  as  one  whose 
background  was  all  literature,  and  who  had 
assimilated  the  culture  of  the  other  great  civi- 
lized nations. 

Criticism  was  with  Sainte-Beuve,  as  he  him- 
self said,  "an  instinct  and  a  passion,"  but  he  laid 
down  no  critical  canons,  as  other  critics  have 

[49] 


50  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

done.  Boileau  and  men  of  lesser  eminence  have 
attempted  to  teach  what  may  be  called  the 
science  of  the  profession,  and  Lessing  has  writ- 
ten an  immortal  text-book  on  one  aspect  of  the 
subject;  Sainte-Beuve  embodied  his  critical 
views  in  countless  articles,  from  which  those  who 
would  learn  his  secret  may  deduce  his  theory  as 
best  they  can.  Yet  he  was  lavish  enough  of 
direct  advice,  which  no  one  who  aspires  to  lit- 
erary taste,  let  alone  to  literary  judgment,  can 
afford  to  ignore.  We  may  open  his  pages  any- 
where, and  we  shall  learn  and  admire.  In  one 
of  his  Monday  Causeries,  that  on  "Public  Even- 
ing Readings,"  we  seem  to  be  initiated  into  a 
course  of  lectures  not  only  on  French  literature 
and  aesthetics,  but  on  the  proper  study  of  litera- 
ture in  general,  and  on  the  art  of  reading  wisely 
books  of  whatever  kind.  He  speaks  as  the  lover 
of  French  literature,  who  would  open  its  treas- 
ures to  his  countrymen,  and  as  the  man  of  inter- 
national culture  who  admires  all  that  is  of  uni- 
versal appeal.  "I  should  wish,"  he  warningly 
says,  "the  lecturer  dwelling  on  the  beauties  and 
the  grandeur  of  our  literature  and  national  his- 
tory to  guard  against  repeating  what  is  so  con- 


sainte-beuve's  unique  position        51 

stantly  said,  in  colleges  and  even  in  Academies 
on  solemn  occasions :  that  the  French  are  the 
greatest  and  most  sensible  of  all  nations,  and  our 
literature  the  greatest  of  all  literatures.  I 
should  wish  him  to  content  himself  with  saying 
that  it  is  one  of  the  finest,  and  that  the  world  did 
not  begin  and  does  not  end  with  us." 

Much  as  has  been  written  about  Sainte-Beuve, 
his  cosmopolitan  aspect  has  not  yet  been  suffi- 
ciently emphasized,  although  an  attentive  read- 
ing of  his  critical  articles,  whatever  the  subject, 
cannot  fail  to  disclose  his  international  sym- 
pathies. What  he  admires,  for  instance,  above 
all  in  Montaigne  is  that  he,  "like  Socrates,  did 
not  consider  himself  citizen  of  a  single  town,  but 
of  the  whole  world,  that  his  imagination 
grasped,  in  its  wide  sweep,  the  universal  charac- 
ter of  all  ages  and  all  countries."  If  he  ranks 
Montaigne  with  the  wisest  of  Frenchmen,  it  is 
precisely  because  he  finds  in  him  a  wisdom  that 
is  not  distinctively  French.  "Such  as  he  is," 
says  Sainte-Beuve,  "Montaigne  is  our  Horace; 
he  is  like  him  in  his  very  nature  and  often  in 
form  and  expression,  although  in  point  of  style 
he  also  resembles  Seneca.     His  book  is  a  treas- 


52  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

ure-house  of  moral  observations  and  experi- 
ences; open  his  pages  where  we  may,  and  we 
shall  be  sure  to  find,  no  matter  what  his  momen- 
tary mood,  some  wise  thought  expressed  in  a 
telling  and  impressive  manner,  something  stand- 
ing out  in  its  beautiful  and  deep  meaning, 
graven  permanently  into  one  striking  word,  or  a 
single,  strong,  intimate,  or  grand  line."  The 
comparison  with  Horace  is  carried  further:  we 
lose  sight  of  Montaigne  the  Frenchman,  and 
have  before  us  once  more  the  polished  wit  of 
antiquity,  who  bids  us  dismiss  our  private  anxie- 
ties and  public  concerns,  and  refrain  from  bor- 
rowing trouble.  Sainte-Beuve  gives  us  a  true 
measure  of  his  critical  capacity  in  such  allusions. 
Again  and  again  this  note  of  insistence  on 
comparisons  with  other  writers  than  those  of 
one's  own  language  is  struck  in  Sainte-Beuve's 
writings.  He  would  have  the  French  profit  by 
such  critics  as  the  Swiss  De  Muralt,  who,  in  his 
Lettres  sur  les  Anglais  et  les  Francais,  tells 
Sainte-Beuve's  countrymen  certain  wholesome 
truths.  Apropos  of  De  Muralt's  criticism  of 
Boileau's  Satires,  Sainte-Beuve  remarks  that 
such  judgments  are  of  particular  value  to  those 


SAINTE-BEUVE'S   UNIQUE   POSITION  ^3 

"who  look  at  French  literature  at  some  distance, 
and  take  their  standard  of  comparison  from  the 
great  poets  of  all  times  and  of  all  countries,  and 
from  human  nature  itself."  With  what  con- 
vincing earnestness  does  Sainte-Beuve  plead  the 
cause  of  minor  writers,  like  Gresset  and  Parny, 
who  have  been  stripped  by  narrow  critics  of 
their  peculiar  charm  and  thus  robbed  of  the 
appreciation  due  them.  How  ought  one  to 
approach  writers  like  these?  he  asks.  Are  the 
learned  but  one-sided  commentators  to  have  it 
all  their  own  dull  way?  What  ought  to  be  the 
proper  equipment  of  the  critic?  "Is  it  neces- 
sary to  adopt  the  method  of  Gervinus  in  order 
to  understand  and  admire  La  Fontaine?  In 
order  to  give  to  Gresset  his  proper  place,  to 
assign  to  an  elegy  of  Parny  the  rank  it  deserves, 
is  it  indispensable  for  us  to  have  gone  the  rounds 
of  all  literature,  to  have  read  the  Nibelungen 
and  to  know  by  heart  the  mystic  stanzas  of 
Calderon?"  Possibly,  he  says.  "In  any  case, 
this  is  the  longest  route,  and  when  we  return 
home  into  our  own  quarters  we  run  the  risk  of 
being  so  fatigued  that  we  fall  asleep.  Never- 
theless, I  admit  that  if  a  small  amount  of  knowl- 


54  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

edge  takes  us  away  from  the  love  of  beauty  and 
simple  charms,  much  knowledge  brings  us  back 
to  it." 

Sainte-Beuve  looked  upon  spontaneous  love 
of  nature,  truth,  and  beauty,  as  lying  at  the  very 
foundation  of  the  great  works  of  literature,  as 
of  the  great  deeds  of  men.  Against  these  senti- 
ments the  efforts  of  reformers  beat  in  vain.  If 
literature  and  all  human  institutions  are  to 
endure,  it  is  because  of  their  response  to  a  uni- 
versal need.  The  appeals  of  reformers  to  the 
intellect  alone  fail  in  literature,  as  they  do  in 
life.  There  is  a  significant  passage  on  this  sub- 
ject in  Sainte-Beuve's  article  on  Sieyes.  "His 
mistake,  like  the  mistakes  of  all  who  seek  soli- 
tude, lay  in  believing  that  a  radical  reform  in 
human  nature  is  possible,  and  that  man,  even  if 
we  take  the  chosen  few,  can  be  made  once  for 
all  to  obey  reason." 

Sainte-Beuve  had  as  little  of  the  zealous 
reformer  and  innovator  in  him  as  Goethe.  They 
were  alike  in  their  distrust  of  apostles  of  any 
new  creed,  in  their  endeavor  to  preserve  rather 
than  to  demolish  and  build  anew.  Sainte- 
Beuve's  entire  activity  as  a  critic  breathes  repose 


sainte-beuve's  unique  position        55 

and  moderation,  and  the  past  was  ever  present 
with  him.  Genius  without  repose  was  to  him 
incomplete  and  incapable  of  perfection.  He 
said  of  La  Harpe  that  he  was  wanting  in  some 
of  the  qualities  essential  in  the  formation  of 
character,  that  he  had  neither  moderation  nor 
balance,  and  did  not  know  what  it  means  to  stop 
at  the  right  time  or  to  return  wisely  to  one's 
moorings;  that  he  had  no  memory  for  the  past. 
"The  last  eleven  or  twelve  years  of  his  life,"  he 
remarked,  "showed  that  impossibility  of  his  ever 
reaching  maturity  which  is  the  defect  of  cer- 
tain emotional  natures." 

What  he  liked,  above  all,  in  a  writer  was  the 
ability  to  pause  and  seek  refuge  from  the  petty 
concerns  of  the  moment  in  the  permanent  things 
of  the  past.  "Let  there  be,"  he  said,  in  an  article 
on  Jules  Janin,  "beyond  the  region  of  all  the 
political  systems  and  the  borders  of  warring 
doctrines  a  territory  more  or  less  neutral — a  kind 
of  sylvan  retreat  where  one  is  welcome  to  stray 
for  a  little  while  and  dream  of  those  things  old 
as  the  world  and  yet  eternally  young,  of  spring 
and  summer  and  love  and  youth;  wiiere  one  may 
even  walk  about  (if  youth  be  past)  with  a  book 


56  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

in  one's  hand,  and  live  with  an  author  of  another 
age,  free  to  enjoy  him  for  the  whole  day,  and, 
on  returning  to  the  city,  to  ask  every  passer-by, 
*Have  you,  too,  read  the  book?'  Monsieur  Janin 
claims  this  right,  and  I  claim  it  with  him, 
although  with  less  reason,  for  I  have  long  since 
ceased  to  dream  of  youth  and  spring;  but  I  do 
want  the  rambler  and  dreamer  to  have  the  right 
to  read  an  old  book,  a  book  as  far  removed  as 
possible  from  the  quarrels  of  the  day,  and 
become  completely  absorbed  in  it." 

This  art  of  dreaming,  book  in  hand,  Sainte- 
Beuve  understood  better  than  any  critic  before 
or  after  him.  He  finds  himself  in  the  company 
of  another  dreamer,  Fontenelle,  in  his  fanciful 
Entretiens  sur  la  Pluralite  des  Mondes  (talks  on 
astronomy  with  a  beautiful  marquise  in  a  beau- 
tiful park)  and  whither  does  Sainte-Beuve's 
fancy,  spurred  on  by  his  vast  knowledge,  not  lead 
him!  While  admitting  the  insinuating  charm 
of  these  poetico-scientific  discourses,  he  refuses 
to  surrender  to  a  method  which  "wheedles  one 
into  truth."  How  differently,  he  muses,  does 
Pascal  view  Heaven  and  Nature!  "Pascal  felt 
in  awe  and  trembling  the  majesty  and  immensity 


sainte-I'euve's  unique  position        57 

of  Nature,  while  Fontenelle  seems  merely  able 
to  detect  her  cleverness.  He  never  possessed 
that  ideal,  celestial  geometry  which  a  Pascal,  a 
Dante,  a  Milton,  or  even  a  Buffon  conceived  of 
as  established  from  the  very  beginning;  he  has 
it  not  and  has  no  idea  that  he  lacks  it;  he  belit- 
tles the  heavens  in  trying  to  explain  them." 

Sainte-Beuve  was  well  read  in  the  natural  sci- 
ences; his  study  of  medicine  and  anatomy  in  par- 
ticular stood  him  in  good  stead,  yet  even  in 
discussing  men  of  science  he  was  chiefly  inter- 
ested in  the  literary  and  personal  aspects  of  his 
subject.  He  inquired  into  the  range  and  depth 
of  the  author's  mind,  into  his  relations  with  the 
thinkers  of  other  countries;  he  analyzed  his  lan- 
guage, and  asked  whether  his  genius  was  imagi- 
native and  went  hand  in  hand  with  grace  and 
culture.  Buffon,  for  this  reason,  interested  him 
deeply;  he  found  in  him  that  sacred  celestial 
flame  which  the  great  naturalist  ignored  in  his 
dictum  that  genius  is  nothing  but  a  matter  of 
industry  and  patience.  "The  genius  of  Buffon," 
Sainte-Beuve  said,  "partakes  equally  of  the  poet 
and  the  philosopher;  the  two  characters  fuse  and 
unite  in  him  as  was  the  case  in  primitive  times." 


^8  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

It  has  been  said  that  Bufifon  oscillated  between 
Newton  and  Descartes;  Sainte-Beuve  maintains 
that  Buffon  has  an  equal  share,  rather,  in  New- 
ton and  Milton,  and  that  precisely  where  he  is 
most  systematic  he  is  most  poetic. 

Sainte-Beuve  let  it  be  clearly  understood  that 
he  wished  to  be  ranged  among  the  critics  who, 
without  promulgating  a  system  of  their  own, 
prove  by  the  manner  in  which  they  pronounce 
judgment  their  right  to  speak  with  authority. 
"The  characteristic  of  critics  in  general,"  he  said 
(in  his  article  on  Villemain  and  Cousin),  "is, 
as  the  name  indicates,  to  judge,  and,  wherever 
necessary,  to  render  a  clear-cut  decision.  Take 
all  the  important  men  to  whom  the  title  of  critic 
has  been  applied,  Malherbe,  Boileau  (for  both 
were  critics  in  the  form  of  poets)  ;  Dr.  Johnson 
in  England,  our  own  La  Harpe,  even  De  Fon- 
tanes — all  these  men,  who  were  authoritative  in 
their  day,  judged  in  matters  of  taste  with  vi- 
vacity, perhaps  with  too  much  dogmatism,  but 
at  all  events  clearly  and  with  irresistible  definite- 
ness." 

Constituted  as  he  was,  Sainte-Beuve  demanded 
of  the  great  writers,  even  in  details,   accurate 


sainte-beuve's  unique  position        59 

knowledge.  Vagueness  was  in  his  eyes  an  evi- 
dence, if  not  a  confession,  of  weakness.  He  takes 
Balzac  severely  to  task  for  his  psychological 
vagaries,  for  his  leanings  towards  the  Sweden- 
borgs,  Mesmers,  Saint-Germains  and  Caglio- 
stros,  and  he  makes  effective  use  of  his  own 
physiological  knowledge  by  twitting  Balzac 
with  having  discovered,  in  his  studies  of  the 
human  anatomy,  imaginary  veins  and  lymphatic 
vessels'. 

Sainte-Beuve  was  not  wholly  just  to  Balzac, 
though  he  recognized  in  him  "perhaps  the  most 
original  and  penetrating  painter  of  the  morals  of 
his  time."  The  immensity  of  his  canvases,  the 
audaciousness  of  his  attempts,  offended  his  deli- 
cate sense  of  proportion,  and  he  felt  uneasy  in 
the  morbid  atmosphere  of  Balzac's  characters. 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  too,  as  Sainte-Beuve  recog- 
nized, painted  on  a  large  scale,  but  he  fills  us 
with  delight,  while  Balzac,  though  he  had  come 
under  his  spell,  could  only  envy,  but  never  emu- 
late, the  charm  of  the  Scotch  wizard.  "Had 
not  Scott,"  asked  Sainte-Beuve,  "breathed  that 
universal  charm,  that  purity  and  healthfulness, 
that  wholesome  air  which  circulates  even  amid 


6o  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

the  conflict  of  human  passions?"  One  feels  the 
need  of  going  to  him  for  refreshment,  says 
Sainte-Beuve,  of  plunging  into  some  sane  and 
clear  book  after  finishing  the  Parents  Pauvres, 
or  of  immersing  one's  self  in  a  song  of  Milton, 
"in  lucid  streams,"  in  those  pure  currents  of 
which  the  poet  sings. 

Sainte-Beuve  speaks  of  English  writers,  not  as 
a  Frenchman,  but  as  Goethe  speaks  of  Scott  and 
Goldsmith — with  cosmopolitan  understanding. 
"If  you  knew  English,"  he  writes  to  a  friend 
who  had  sent  him  some  verses  of  his  own,  "you 
would  have  a  treasure,  upon  which  you  could 
draw.  England  has  a  poetic  literature  greatly 
superior  to  ours — one  which,  above  all,  is  more 
healthful,  just  as  it  is  richer.  Wordsworth  has 
not  been  translated,  one  cannot  translate  such 
things,  one  goes  and  drinks  them  at  the  source." 

There  are  many  allusions  to  Wordsworth  in 
Sainte-Beuve's  pages,  and  he  has  himself  felici- 
tously translated — "imitated"  the  French  call  it, 
with  a  just  recognition  of  the  limits  of  transla- 
tion— several  of  Wordsworth's  sonnets.  Keats 
also  engaged  Sainte-Beuve's  muse  at  the  time 
when  he  still  attempted  poetic  flights.     He  was, 


SAINTE-BEUVE'S   UNIQUE   POSITION  6 1 

however,  more  at  home  with  the  English  prose 
writers.  He  wrote  penetrating  essays  on  Gib- 
bon, Lord  Chesterfield  and  Cowper,  as  he  did 
on  Benjamin  Franklin.  They  had  in  common  a 
grace  of  style  not  unlike  his  own,  and  in  the  case 
of  Gibbon  the  difficulty  of  defining  a  genius 
partly  French  and  yet  characteristically  British 
challenged  Sainte-Beuve's  ingenuity.  He  was, 
however,  in  all  his  criticisms  impelled  by  a  far 
higher  motive  than  zest  in  analyzing  style  and 
character.  He  possessed  from  the  very  begin- 
ning, says  Paul  Elmer  More,  "that  inquisitive 
passion  for  the  truth  without  which  all  other 
critical  gifts  are  as  brass  and  tinkling  cymbals." 
With  such  impassioned  love  of  truth  fondness 
for  generalization  is  incompatible.  Sainte- 
Beuve  had  an  innate  distrust  of  a  certain  class  of 
historical  writers  whose  mission,  almost  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course,  inclines  them  to  establish  theories 
in  order  to  explain  facts.  Memoirs,  the  living 
testimony  of  eye-witnesses,  he  read  with  an 
enthusiasm  which  the  sober  pages  of  the  his- 
torian seldom  evoked.  His  admiration  for 
Saint-Simon's  pictures  of  the  court  of  Louis 
XIV  was  unbounded,  but  he  was  sceptical  as  to 


62  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

the  absolute  value  of  Guizot's  Histoire  de  la 
Civilisation  en  Europe.  "Generalizations,"  he 
said,  "which  appear  to  us  so  profound  when 
applied  to  distant  ages,  seem  superficial  enough 
if  we  apply  them  to  our  own  time.  Let  me  make 
my  meaning  clear:  I  admire  that  power  of  a 
broad  and  ingenious  mind  which  remolds  and 
restores  of  the  past  all  that  can  be  restored, 
which  gives  to  it,  if  not  the  true  meaning,  at  least 
a  plausible  and  probable  meaning,  which  puts 
order  into  history,  and  gives  direction  and  use- 
ful support  to  our  study  of  it.  But  what  I  object 
to  as  dangerous  is  the  tendency  to  draw  conclu- 
sions from  a  past  thus  remade  and  reconstructed, 
from  a  past  artificially  simplified — conclusions 
bearing  on  a  changeable  and  changing  present. 
As  for  myself,  after  reading  some  of  these  high- 
sounding  lessons  on  the  History  of  Civilization, 
given  with  so  much  precision  and  definiteness,  I 
quickly  open  a  volume  of  the  Memoirs  of  Retz, 
in  order  to  see  the  real  play  of  human  intrigue 
and  masquerade." 

There  is  a  passage  in  Sainte-Beuve's  article 
on  Joubert  (Causeries  du  Lundi,  Vol.  I)  which 
gives  us  a  glimpse  of  his  method,  if  method  it 


SAINTE-BEUVE'S   UNIQUE   POSITION  63 

can  be  called,  of  preserving  intact  his  literary 
detachment  while  nourishing  his  taste  at  the 
varied  sources  of  admirable  writing. 

"I  have  sometimes  asked  myself,"  he  says, 
"what  a  handbook  of  French  rhetoric  ought  to 
be,  a  book  sensible,  fair,  and  natural,  and  it  has 
even  happened  to  me,  once  in  my  life,  that  I  had 
to  talk  on  the  subject  before  young  people.  What 
was  I  to  do  to  avoid  falling  into  beaten  tracks 
and  being  caught  by  the  fancies  of  the  day?  I 
began  simply  with  Pascal,  with  his  thoughts  on 
literature,  in  which  the  great  writer  laid  down 
some  of  his  observations  on  his  art.  I  read  them 
aloud  and  commented  upon  them.  Then  I  took 
La  Bruyere's  chapter  on  Ouvrages  de  I'espr'it. 
I  then  passed  on  to  Fenelon's  Dialogues  stir 
I'Eloquence  and  his  Lettre  a  VAcademie  Fran- 
caise;  I  went  over  the  ground  carefully,  choos- 
ing my  points  and  always  commenting  by  exam- 
ples if  need  be  from  living  writers.  Vauvenar- 
gues's  Thoughts  and  Literary  Characters  came 
next.  I  borrowed  from  Voltaire  the  articles  on 
Taste  and  Style,  in  the  Dictiofinaire  Philo- 
sophique,  his  Temple  of  Taste,  and  some  pas- 
sages from  the  letters  in  which  he  passes  judg- 


64  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

ment  on  Boileau,  Racine  and  Corneille.  I 
added,  in  order  to  widen  my  horizon  at  this 
particular  moment,  some  reflections  on  the  intel- 
lect of  Goethe  and  on  English  taste,  as  exempli- 
fied in  Coleridge.  Marmontel,  in  his  Elements 
de  Litterature,  furnished  me  with  an  article  on 
Style,  an  admirable  piece  of  writing.  I  took  good 
care  not  to  omit  Buffon  on  the  same  subject, 
whose  words  crowned  the  whole.  Finally,  with 
the  classic  circle  complete,  I  gave  my  young 
hearers  Joubert  as  a  sort  of  dessert  and  choice 
tidbit.    Here  was  a  meal  fit  for  Pythagoras!" 

Who  does  not  recognize,  in  the  delicate  play 
of  Sainte-Beuve's  fancy,  the  almost  Spartan 
demands  on  himself  which  his  conception  of  the 
duty  of  a  critic  imposed  upon  his  time?  Such  a 
universal  interest  in  literature,  such  conscien- 
tious preparation  for  the  task  before  him,  presup- 
posed complete  abstraction  from  society  during 
the  days  of  work.  No  one  plodded  more  indus- 
triously than  Sainte-Beuve,  burying  himself,  as 
he  did,  among  his  books  from  morning  till  night, 
and  only  emerging  on  the  one  day  intervening 
between  the  completion  of  one  Lundi  and  the 
beginning    of    another.      "A    critic,"    he    said, 


sainte-beuve's  unique  position       65 

"ought  not  to  have  too  many  friends  and  social 
relations — those  obligations  dictated  by  conven- 
tion. .  .  .  Without  being  exactly  freebooters, 
as  we  have  been  called,  we  must  be  able  to  roam 
about  at  will ;  we  must  have  elbow-room.  Mon- 
sieur Janin  wittily  said  one  day  to  a  lady  who  at 
an  evening  entertainment  introduced  him  to  a 
number  of  guests:  'You  are  procuring  me  so 
many  friends  that  you  rob  me  of  all  my  spirit.'  " 
In  a  more  serious  vein,  Sainte-Beuve  insisted 
that  the  critic  must  scrupulously  weigh  his 
words.  He  must  be  sparing  of  superlatives  and 
know  the  value  of  perspective.  In  discussing 
M.  de  Saint-Victor's  critical  manner,  he  said: 
"The  author's  preferences  are  expressed  in  an 
unmistakable  way.  He  observes  proper  grada- 
tion, and  groups  literature  and  art  as  Raphael 
groups  his  School  of  Athens  and  Ingres  his  ceil- 
ings. Each  genius,  each  talent,  is  placed  accord- 
ing to  its  merits  and  on  its  own  plane :  Gil  Bias 
is  not  on  a  level  with  Do?i  Quixote/^  Sainte- 
Beuve  had  no  patience  with  the  easy-going,  com- 
plaisant critic  who  carries  his  optimism  into 
literature,  identifies  himself  with  no  settled  con- 
viction, opposes  no  new  movement,  and,  as  critic, 


66  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

is  all  things  to  all  men.  He  acknowledged  the 
exquisite  good  taste,  in  classic  matters,  of  that 
once  famous  critic  Huet,  but  he  was  repelled  by 
the  spineless  amiability  of  Huet's  judgment  con- 
cerning French  literature.  *'No  doubt,"  he  said, 
"he  was  incomparably  more  at  home  among  the 
ancients  than  Boileau,  who  indeed  seemed  almost 
an  ignoramus  beside  him;  but  of  that  keen  lit- 
erary feeling,  that  brisk  movement,  that  impetu- 
ous judgment  that  seem  to  spring  from  a  glowing 
heart,  Huet  had  not  a  particle."  Sainte-Beuve 
discriminated  very  sharply  between  writers  who 
merely  adorn  literature  and  the  "thundering 
minds"  that  arouse  a  century.  "It  is  after  all," 
he  says,  "the  ignorant,  like  Pascal,  Descartes 
and  Rousseau,  men  who  have  read  little,  but  who 
think  and  dare,  that,  for  good  or  evil,  stir  the 
world  and  make  it  move."  Few  of  those  men 
that  have  aroused  a  century  appealed  to  Sainte- 
Beuve  as  much  as  Franklin,  of  whom,  while 
dwelling  on  his  lack  of  certain  literary  refine- 
ments, he  said: 

"Franklin  is  by  nature  above  the  anxieties  of 
the  Childe  Harolds  or  the  susceptibilities  of  the 
Chateaubriands.    We,  of  the  outspoken  French 


SAINTE-BEUVE'S  UNIQUE   POSITION  67 

race,  might  have  wished  that  there  had  been 
something  of  all  this  in  him.  .  .  .  Let  us,  how- 
ever, look  at  Franklin  such  as  he  is,  in  his  proper 
stature  and  in  all  his  moral  beauty.  That  judi- 
cious man,  firm,  astute,  skilful,  honest,  remains 
unshaken  when  injustice  approaches  him  or  his 
compatriots.  For  many  years  he  tries  to 
enlighten  public  opinion  in  the  mother  country, 
and  to  avert  extreme  measures;  until  the  last 
moment  he  does  his  utmost  to  bring  about  a 
reconciliation  based  on  fairness;  and  when  on 
the  very  eve  of  the  final  rupture,  one  of  the 
influential  men  of  England  [Lord  Howe]  leaves 
him  still  some  hope  of  reconciliation,  tears  of 
joy  roll  down  his  cheeks.  But  when,  finally, 
hardened  injustice  and  obstinate  pride  close 
all  avenues  to  his  countrymen,  he  is  carried 
away  by  the  loftiest  and  most  invincible  pas- 
sion, and  he  who  thinks  that  every  peace  is  good 
and  that  every  u-ar  is  bad,  is  henceforth  for  war, 
for  the  holy  war  of  patriotic  and  legitimate 
defence." 


LOWELL:     PATRIOT    AND 
COSMOPOLITAN 

Lowell's  fame  as  a  critic  has  been  over- 
shadowed by  his  eminence  in  other  fields,  where 
public  recognition  is  more  easily  obtained,  or 
at  least  more  spontaneously  rendered.  The 
range  of  his  accomplishments  was  very  wide. 
A  poet  whose  Commemoration  Ode  stirred  the 
heart  of  the  nation  to  its  depths,  a  brilliant  sati- 
rist in  prose  and  verse,  a  political  writer  of 
singular  power,  an  admirable  teacher  and  lec- 
turer, a  fascinating  orator,  conversationalist,  and 
letter-writer,  a  skilful  and  dignified  diplomat, 
and,  above  all,  a  pure  and  sagacious  patriot — • 
who  would  look,  first  and  foremost,  for  the 
critic  in  so  many-sided  and  picturesque  a  per- 
sonality? Yet,  the  attentive  reader  of  Lowell's 
works  cannot  fail  to  recognize  that  in  all  his 
activities — not  seldom  even  in  his  poetry — the 
critical  faculty  was  paramount.  His  ancestry 
amply  accounts  for  his  observant  and  reflective 
temperament,  as  it  does  for  his  love  of  Nature, 
especially  in  her  rugged  mood,  his  sympathy 

[68] 


LOWELL  :  PATRIOT  AND  COSMOPOLITAN        69 

with  the  sturdy  untutored  man,  racy  of  the  soil, 
his  hard-headed  Yankee  sense  of  humor. 

In  a  famous  distich  Grillparzer,  referring  to 
the  beautiful  hill  that  commands  the  finest  view 
of  Vienna,  says:  ''If  you  look  at  the  country 
around  you  from  the  heights  of  the  Kahlenberg 
you  will  understand  what  I  have  written  and 
what  I  am."  Similarly,  if  we  would  know  what 
Lowell  was,  and  why  he  wrote  as  he  did,  we 
have  to  know  New  England  and  particularly 
Cambridge,  where  he  was  born  and  where  he 
died.  He  was  a  man  of  the  world,  easilv  at 
home  in  the  great  capitals  of  Europe,  but  his 
musings  ever  took  him  back  to  the  town  on  the 
Charles  River.  Puritan  as  he  was  in  his  sense 
of  duty  toward  man  and  the  State,  his  outlook 
on  life  and  literature  was  that  of  the  serene  phi- 
losopher and  the  cosmopolitan  critic.  He  dis- 
claimed the  title  of  scholar,  but  the  extent  of  his 
reading  was  extraordinary,  and  his  knowledge 
of  both  essentials  and  minutiae  in  literary  mat- 
ters was  deep  and  sound  beyond  that  of  most 
specialists.  He  drew  inspiration  from  English, 
French,  Italian,  Spanish  and  German  sources, 
as  well  as  from  the  ancients.    No  critic  of  simi- 


JO  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

lar  importance  in  literary  history  has  spoken  of 
the  glories  of  the  past  with  more  contagious 
enthusiasm  and  with  a  freer  fancy.  He  con- 
ducts us  through  the  highways  and  byways  of 
many  literatures  at  a  leisurely  gait,  and  though 
his  wilful  digressions,  his  bewildering  allusive- 
ness,  at  times  threaten  to  obstruct  our  path,  we 
surrender  ourselves  w^ith  delight  to  so  fascinat- 
ing and  instructive  a  guide. 

The  most  important  critical  w^ork  of  James 
Russell  Lowell  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  book 
reviews  which,  as  editor  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  he  contributed  to  its  pages,  though  all 
his  articles  were  scholarly  criticism  of  a  high 
order,  sometimes  seasoned  with  his  characteris- 
tic wit.  It  is  the  essayist  Lowell  that  gives  us 
the  measure  of  the  critic. 

Perhaps  the  ripest  fruit  of  Lowell's  learning 
and  critical  activity  was  his  treatise  on  Dante— 
the  outgrowth  of  that  life-long  familiarity  with 
the  poet  of  which  Harvard  students  were  to  reap 
so  rich  a  harvest;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
this  essay  is  to-day  read  with  the  same  relish  as 
his  papers  on  lesser  writers.  He  was  most  effec- 
tive when  least  academic.     Perhaps  no  other 


LOWELL  :  PATRIOT  AND  COSMOPOLITAN        7 1 

international  critic  is  so  quotable.  His  pages 
bristle  with  the  unexpected — with  sallies  of  wit 
and  humor,  puns  of  varying  quality,  curious 
metaphors  and  quaint  conceits,  with  deep  senti- 
ment and  shrewd  wisdom.  And  the  whole,  if 
not  always  the  last  word  in  literary  criticism,  is 
itself  delectable  literature. 

Posterity  alone  can  decide  whether  the  critic 
was  also  the  prophet.  In  the  case  of  Lowell, 
the  best  international  judgment  has  already  con- 
firmed his  own  in  conspicuous  instances.  Thus 
his  estimate  of  Carlyle  has  gradually  super- 
seded that  extravagant  eulogium  which  hailed 
in  him  the  inspired  prophet  of  a  new  gospel  in 
history  and  morals. 

Almost  every  page  that  Lowell  wrote  bears 
proof  of  his  love  of  letters,  his  gusto  in  borrow- 
ing from  a  half-forgotten  author,  no  matter  in 
what  language.  Unsystematic,  on  the  whole,  his 
reading  undeniably  was.  One  of  his  most  dis- 
criminating critics,  Mr.  Ferris  Greenslet,  well 
says  of  him:  "Lowell,  it  is  needless  to  say  at  this 
hour,  was  never  quite  a  scholar  in  the  German 
sense  of  the  word,  nor  even  in  the  modern  Amer- 
ican academic  sense:  but  he  was  a  scholar  in 


72  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

what  we  may  perhaps  think  a  more  admirable 
sense — that  in  which  the  bookmen  of  the  Renais- 
sance were  so."  Yet  there  were  at  least  two  for- 
eign fields,  besides  Dante  literature,  in  which 
Lowell  was  thoroughly  at  home:  French  lan- 
guage and  literature  of  the  ante-classic  period, 
and  the  dramas  of  Calderon.  Though  he 
entered  upon  his  post  of  American  Minister  to 
Spain  with  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  Span- 
ish literature,  and  a  mastery  of  the  language 
which  soon  procured  him  admission  to  the  Span- 
ish Academy,  it  was  only  to  Calderon,  and  next 
to  him  to  Cervantes,  that  he  gave  his  heart.  He 
revelled  in  Calderon  as  Grillparzer  did  in  Lope. 
Allusions  to  Calderon  give  point  to  not  a  few 
of  Lowell's  critical  remarks;  and  they  may  come 
upon  us,  with  his  startling  suddenness,  in  the 
most  unexpected  places.  While  on  the  ocean, 
he  says:  ''When  we  were  up  with  the  Azores, 
we  began  to  meet  flying-fish  and  Portuguese 
men-of-war  beautiful  as  the  galley  of  Cleopatra, 
tiny  craft  that  dared  these  seas  before  Columbus. 
I  have  seen  one  of  the  former  rise  from  the  crest 
of  a  wave,  and,  glancing  from  another  some  two 
hundred  feet  beyond,  take  a  fresh  flight  of  per- 


LOWELL :  PATRIOT  AND  COSMOPOLITAN        73 

haps  as  far.  How  Calderon  would  have  simi- 
lized this  pretty  creature  had  he  ever  seen  it! 
How  would  he  have  run  him  up  and  down  the 
gamut  of  simile!  If  a  fish,  then  a  fish  with 
wings;  if  a  bird,  then  a  bird,  with  fins;  and  so 
on,  keeping  up  the  light  shuttle-cock  of  a  con- 
ceit as  is  his  wont." 

Unconsciously,  Low^ell,  in  dwelling  on  Cal- 
deron's  hunt  for  similes,  has  described  the  bent 
of  his  own  mind.  The  Spanish  dramatist  is  to 
him  one  of  the  great  writers  of  all  time.  "For 
fascination  of  style  and  profound  suggestion,  it 
would  be  hard  to  name  another  author  superior 
to  Calderon,  if  indeed  equal  to  him.  His  charm 
was  equally  felt  by  two  minds  as  unlike  each 
other  as  those  of  Goethe  and  Shelley.  These  in 
themselves  are  sufficient  achievements,  and  the 
intellectual  life  of  a  nation  could  maintain  itself 
on  the  unearned  increment  of  these  without  fur- 
ther addition  to  its  resources." 

One  of  the  most  distinctive  characteristics  of 
Lowell's  critical  genius  is  the  possession  of  a 
robust  common  sense — "horse  sense"  the  col- 
loquial phrase  has  termed  it— which  accompan- 
ied his  cosmopolitan  standards  and  in  no  way 


74  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

jars  with  his  lofty  idealism.  No  one  has  writ- 
ten with  greater  admiration  of  Emerson  than  he. 
Transcendentalism,  as  personified  in  Emer- 
son and  illumined  in  his  pages,  was  to  him  one 
thing;  transcendentalism  as  lived  by  Thoreau 
and  expounded  by  the  lesser  lights  of  New  Eng- 
land, was  quite  another.  There  was  need,  in 
Lowell's  day,  for  such  a  critical  clearing  of  the 
atmosphere  as  his  article  on  Thoreau. 

Lowell,  though  fond  of  the  great  classic  writ- 
ers and  never  long  separated  from  his  Homer 
and  Euripides,  has  been  charged  with  indif- 
ference to  Hellenism.  There  is  certainly  no 
evidence  that  he  arrogated  to  himself  the  right 
to  speak  authoritatively  on  matters  of  classic 
art;  but  we  cannot  fail  to  recognize  that  he  was 
as  deeply  imbued  with  the  classic  spirit  as 
Goethe,  Grillparzer,  and  Sainte-Beuve.  He 
distinguished  acutely  between  the  conflicting 
claims  of  classicists  and  modernists,  pleading  for 
the  moderns,  but  not  as  against  the  ancients. 

Like  every  other  great  critic,  Lowell  had  his 
own  method;  his  discursiveness,  his  playful  seri- 
ousness, the  interfusion  of  the  classic  and  the 
modern,  the  Gallic  and  the  Puritan  spirit,  are 


LOWELL  :  PATRIOT  AND  COSMOPOLITAN        71; 

all  part  of  his  charm.  But  he  could  stick  to  his 
text  as  closely  as  any  parson  (indeed  he  often 
moralized  as  well  as  any),  and  it  is  precisely 
when  he  speaks  on  Greek  art  and  the  Greek 
drama  that  his  argument  is  most  closely-knit 
and  serious. 

In  discussing  Swinburne's  Tragedies  Lowell 
refers  to  the  old  dispute  as  to  the  comparative 
merits  of  the  ancients  and  the  moderns  which 
far  antedates  Fontenelle's  days,  when  it  reached 
fever-heat.  Like  Sainte-Beuve,  who,  with  all 
his  admiration  for  the  classics,  ridicules  those 
who  cannot  think  without  their  permission, 
Low^ell  did  his  own  thinking,  after  enjoying  the 
best  thought  that  ancients  and  moderns  could 
offer  him.  That  we  neither  honor  the  ancients 
nor  profit  ourselves  by  lifeless  imitation  of  clas- 
sic literature,  Lowell  shows  in  his  own  striking 
way. 

As  in  the  case  of  Sainte-Beuve,  we  have  to 
know  all  that  Lowell  said  of  Goethe  in  order  to 
concede  that  the  occasional  strictures  of  a  for- 
eign critic  concerning  the  great  German  do  not 
necessarily  involve  the  crime  of  sacrilege. 
Lowell  was  even  more  outspoken  in  what  he  said 


76  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

of  Lessing.  Stahr's  Life  of  Lessing  served  him 
as  a  text — one  might  say  a  pretext — for  a  homily 
on  the  heaviness  of  German  style,  and  there  is 
too  much  merciless  dissection  of  the  luckless 
biographer  to  enable  Lowell  to  do  full  justice 
to  his  hero;  but  if  the  looseness  of  structure  dis- 
turbs the  symmetry  of  the  essay,  the  witty  digres- 
sions certainly  illumine  and  adorn  it.  Lowell 
was  not  lacking  in  due  appreciation  of  Lessing; 
he  admired,  perhaps,  no  other  character  in  lit- 
erature more  fully,  but  he  did  not  find  in  him 
an  unfailing  source  of  inspiration,  as  he  did  in 
Dante,  Cervantes  or,  most  of  all  possibly,  in  the 
old  English  dramatists  and  poets.  Chaucer, 
Dryden,  Marlowe,  Chapman,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Massinger  and  Ford — how  lovingly 
he  dwelt  on  them,  what  life  and  color  they  all 
assumed  in  his  hands,  what  rich  mines  of  criti- 
cal suggestions  and  comparisons  he  opens  up  to 
us  in  his  glowing  pages!  They  had  nourished 
his  youth,  and  he  returned  to  them  in  old  age, 
his  unforgetable  early  New  England  impres- 
sions enriched  by  all  that  old  England  had  been 
to  him  during  his  honored  residence  there.  Nor 
had  any  American  Minister  ever  given  to  Eng- 


LOWELL  :  PATRIOT  AND  COSMOPOLITAN 


77. 


land  what  James  Russell  Lowell  could  give 
while  representing  his  country  at  the  Court  of  St. 
James.  The  quiet  Harvard  scholar  at  once  took 
rank  not  only  with  famous  old-world  scholars 
and  litterateurs,  with  ripe  diplomats  and  states- 
men, but  with  the  most  accomplished  orators 
and  conversationalists,  all  the  impressive  per- 
sonalities that  graced  the  best  of  London 
society. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  his  addresses  at 
the  numerous  public  functions  to  which  he  will- 
ingly lent  the  never-failing  charm  of  his  pres- 
ence, marked  an  era  in  the  intercourse  between 
the  two  countries.  English  philosophers  and 
workingmen  alike  listened  spellbound  to  the 
message  of  the  American  Minister,  who,  on 
assuming  the  presidency  of  the  Birmingham  and 
Midland  Institute,  expounded  to  the  old  world 
the  meaning  of  "Democracy"  in  the  new;  the 
literary  societies  of  London  asked  themselves 
who  of  their  number  could  speak  of  Fielding 
or  Coleridge  v/ith  a  deeper  appreciation  of  the 
treasures  of  English  literature,  and  temper  criti- 
cism with  such  matchless  grace.  How  deftly  he 
mingles,  in  his  address  at  the  unveiling  of  the 


78  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

bust  of  Fielding,  praise  of  the  great  novelist 
with  denunciation  of  that  British  Philistinism 
which  hesitates,  on  moral  grounds,  to  recognize 
his  excellence. 

With  all  the  freedom  of  the  accredited  Minis- 
ter of  the  great  modern  Republic  and  of  the 
ancient  Republic  of  Letters,  Lowell  lashed  those 
critics  who  would  read  a  Fielding  out  of  polite 
literature  because  of  his  offences  against  polite 
society.  Himself  endowed  with  that  penetrat- 
ing mother  wit  which  goes  to  the  root  of  things, 
Lowell  possessed  in  equal  degree  the  gift  of 
imagination,  without  which  all  the  other  quali- 
fications of  the  critic  go  for  naught.  In  his 
address  on  Coleridge  he  embodied  what  may  be 
considered  his  ideal  of  the  critic's  equipment. 

There  is  a  curious  antagonism  between 
Lowell's  aversion  to  pedantic  display  of  learn- 
ing and  the  profusion  of  antiquarian  lore  in  his 
own  pages.  *T  am  by  temperament  impatient 
of  detail  in  communicating  what  I  have 
acquired,"  he  says  in  the  Prefatory  Note  to  his 
Essays,  "and  too  often  put  into  a  parenthesis 
or  a  note  conclusions  arrived  at  by  long  study 
and   reflection."     He  was  indeed  as  lavish  of 


LOWELL  :  PATRIOT  AND  COSMOPOLITAN        79 

such  condensed  wisdom  as  Sainte-Beuve,  and  he 
appreciated  brevity  and  directness  in  others  per- 
haps even  more  than  the  French  critic.  He 
realized  that  ''simplicity,  where  it  is  not  a  care- 
less gift  of  the  Muses,  is  the  last  and  most  pain- 
ful achievement  of  conscientious  self-denial." 
He  had  a  loving  partiality  for  the  leisurely  pace 
of  an  Izaak  Walton,  but  biographical  ampli- 
tude in  the  case  of  lesser  lights  found  no  favor 
in  his  eyes.  ''Biography,"  he  amusingly  said, 
"has  found  out  a  process  by  which  what  is 
human  may  be  so  thrust  upon  us  as  to  become 
/w-human."  Here  again,  as  so  often  in  criticis- 
ing the  moderns,  he  holds  up  the  ancients  as  a 
model.  "Plutarch,  a  man  of  the  most  many- 
sided  moral  and  intellectual  interests,  has  a 
truer  sense  of  proportion,  and  tempers  his 
amiable  discursiveness  with  an  eye  to  his  neigh- 
bor's dial.  And  in  his  case  the  very  names  of  his 
heroes  are  mostly  so  trumpet-like  as  both  to 
waken  attention  and  to  warrant  it,  ushering  in 
the  bearers  of  them  like  that  flourish  on  the 
Elizabethan  stage  which  told  that  a  king  was 
coming." 

The     kings     in     literature     alone     occupied 


8o  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Lowell's  mind  permanently,  as  they  did  the 
minds  of  the  other  great  critics  of  whom  we  have 
spoken.  Like  them,  when  weary  of  the  petty 
concerns  of  the  day,  he  returns  to  the  ancients 
and  their  golden  age,  which  his  fancy  so  often 
contrasts  with  the  baser  metal  of  our  modern 
epoch.  "I  have  my  own  suspicion  sometimes," 
he  muses,  ''that  the  true  age  of  flint  is  before  and 
not  behind  us.  .  .  .  The  siege  of  Troy  will  be 
remembered  when  those  of  Vicksburg  and  Paris 
are  forgotten." 


PERMANENT    LITERARY 
STANDARDS 

The  value  of  the  lessons  taught  us  by  the 
eminent  writers  we  are  considering  would  be 
largely  lost  if  we  failed  to  see  their  bearing  on 
the  literary  questions  of  the  day.  The  critical 
faculty  is  commonly  supposed  to  be  antagonis- 
tic to  creative  ability;  but  in  Goethe,  Grill- 
parzer,  and  Lowell  we  find  the  productive  as 
well  as  the  critical  faculty  equally  manifest.  In 
the  case  of  Sainte-Beuve  the  prodigious  mass  of 
his  critical  work  outweighs  in  importance  even 
his  uniquely  valuable  History  of  Port-Royal. 
It  is  rare  indeed  to  find  the  analytic  gift  joined 
to  such  fruitful  activity  as  characterized  the 
lives  of  Goethe,  Grillparzer,  Sainte-Beuve,  and 
Lowell.  It  was  their  incessant  and  passionate 
endeavor  to  hold  up  to  their  countrymen  the 
great  models  of  foreign  literatures,  in  order  to 
bring  home  to  them  the  excellence  of  their  own 
great  writers.  Their  chosen  field  was  the  uni- 
versal realm  of  thought  and  beauty.  Imbued 
with  reverence  for  classic  ideals,  they  are 
equally  inspired  by  the  wisdom  of  the  East;  they 

[81] 


82  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

seek  what  is  admirable  in  German,  French, 
Spanish  and  Italian  literature,  and  turn  aside 
to  gather  flowers  from  the  literary  bypaths  of 
other  nations.  Their  sympathetic  ken  embraced 
all  great  works  that  have  stood  the  test  of  time; 
and  they  passed  by  the  mediocre  and  ignoble, 
regardless  of  the  insistence  of  contemporary 
clamor.  They  never  wrote  or  spoke  to  please 
the  crowd,  but  always  to  satisfy  their  literary 
conscience;  they  appealed  only  to  the  cultivated 
taste  of  the  mature  and  receptive.  Grill- 
parzer's  solitary  critical  jottings  during  so  many 
years  bear  the  same  note  of  sincerity  and  fulness 
of  knowledge  as  Goethe's  discursive  talks  with 
his  scholarly  intimates,  Lowell's  elaborate  re- 
views, or  Sainte-Beuve's  Monday  Causeries, 
which,  with  apparently  conversational  ease, 
were  addressed  to  all  literary  Paris.  Though 
the  American  critic  was  far  more  prodigal  of 
recondite  lore  than  the  German,  Austrian  and 
French,  all  four  possessed  a  wholesome  dread  of 
pedantry,  and  they  never  criticised  in  order  to 
demonstrate  their  own  superior  wisdom.  They 
bore  in  mind  Lessing's  warning:  "A  writer  of 
note  will  not  write  merely  to  show  his  wit  and 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  83 

scholarship;  he  addresses  himself  to  the  best  and 
most  enlightened  of  his  time  and  deigns  to  write 
only  what  may  please  them  or  what  will  afifect 
their  feelings."  In  this  aspect  the  critical  work 
of  Goethe,  Grillparzer,  Sainte-Beuve  and 
Lowell  is  identical,  however  different  in  form 
and  expression. 

No  critic  has  condemned  more  severely  than 
Goethe  the  empty  parade  of  knowledge.  "Some 
books,"  he  said,  "seem  to  have  been  written  not 
for  the  purpose  of  teaching  us  something,  but  to 
let  us  know  that  the  author  knew  something," 
and  as  for  the  limitations  of  the  critic,  he 
remarked:  "Rightly  considered  we  learn  only 
from  books  which  are  beyond  our  ability  to 
criticise.  The  author  of  a  book  which  we  can 
criticise  would  have  to  learn  from  us."  But  no 
one  has  spoken  with  greater  emphasis  than 
Goethe  upon  the  importance  of  constantly  add- 
ing to  our  knowledge  if  we  would  rightly  judge 
literature  and  life.  "Talent  of  every  kind,"  he 
said  to  Eckermann,  "is  fed  by  knowledge,  and 
only  through  it  can  it  exercise  its  strength."  He 
said  of  himself  to  Chancellor  Miiller,  in  1830: 
"Would  it  have  been  worth  my  while  to  live  to 


84  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

the  age  of  eighty  if  I  had  always  thought  the 
same  thoughts?  I  strive  to  think  every  day  of 
something  different,  something  new,  in  order  not 
to  get  stale.  One  must  change  incessantly,  and 
renew  and  rejuvenate  himself,  in  order  not  to 
become  rigid." 

In  the  steady  pursuit  of  wisdom  all  the  great- 
est geniuses  attained  their  perfection.  Young 
talents,  conscious  of  their  power,  shrink  from 
the  slow  process  of  weeding  and  pruning  with 
which  even  genius  in  its  prime  cannot  dispense. 
Vehemence  of  assertion  is  a  natural  concomitant 
of  youth,  but  recognition  of  this  fact  does  not 
absolve  the  critic  from  the  duty  of  pointing  out 
to  gifted  minds  the  value  of  moderation  and  self- 
discipline.  It  is  well  known  how  Goethe,  after 
emerging  from  the  period  of  his  own  youthful 
turbulence,  recoiled  from  the  seething  spirit  of 
Schiller's  Robbers.  He  speaks  of  Schiller's 
powerful  but  immature  talent  which  had 
"flooded  the  country  with  a  torrent  of  moral  and 
dramatic  paradoxes." 

The  period  of  Schiller's  intellectual  lawless- 
ness was  brief  and  perhaps  a  necessary  condi- 
tion of  the  development  of  his  genius.     In  the 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  85 

case  of  so  many  writers  of  the  day  who  defy  tra- 
dition and  set  up  standards  of  their  own,  law- 
lessness is  the  only  law^  of  their  being.  No 
growth  is  possible,  because  the  seed  is  lacking. 
They  start  with  deliberate  ignorance  and  deceit- 
ful paradox,  and  end  where  they  began.  The 
current  insistence  on  the  right  of  the  individual 
to  cultivate  his  talent  in  his  own  way  deceives 
only  the  ignorant.  Individual  liberty  of  this 
kind  can  result  only  in  collective  enslavement. 
"You  will  find,"  said  Goethe,  speaking  of  art, 
"that  every  great  master  has  used  what  was 
excellent  in  his  predecessors,  and  this  fact  has 
made  him  great.  Men  like  Raphael  do  not 
grow  spontaneously.  They  had  their  root  in 
the  great  works  of  antiquity.  Had  they  not 
made  use  of  the  advantages  open  to  them,  there 
would  be  little  to  say  about  them."  What  is 
true  of  art  is  equally  true  of  literature.  The 
restlessness  of  modern  endeavor  in  literature 
and  art,  call  it  by  whatever  name  we  please, 
betokens  only  weakness.  We  are  invited  to  call 
the  bewildering  change  progress,  but  for  one 
genius  w^ho  creates  something  original  there  are 
a  thousand  blunderers,  who,  in  attempting  to 


86  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

throw  discredit  on  the  old,  merely  demonstrate 
the  hopelessness  of  the  new.  "To  make  inno- 
vations," says  Lessing,  "may  be  the  characteris- 
tic of  a  great  mind  or  a  small  one.  The  great 
discards  the  old  because  it  has  been  found  insuf- 
ficient or  false,  the  small  because  it  is  old. 
While  the  former  is  influenced  by  reason,  the 
latter  is  by  disgust.  Genius  wants  to  do  more 
than  its  predecessor,  he  who  apes  genius,  merely 
something  different."  And  Goethe  wrote: 
"There  is  no  more  stupid  error  than  the  belief 
of  talented  young  people  that  they  lose  all  credit 
for  originality  by  admitting  the  truth  of  that 
which  has  already  been  recognized  as  such  by 
others."  "There  is  constant  talk  about  origi- 
nality," he  said  to  Eckermann,  "but  what  does 
it  mean?  As  soon  as  we  are  born  the  world 
around  us  begins  to  act  upon  us,  and  so  it  goes  on 
until  the  end.  And,  after  all,  what  can  we  call 
our  own  but  our  energy,  strength  and  determi- 
nation. If  I  could  recount  all  I  owe  to  my  great 
predecessors  and  contemporaries  there  would  be 
little  left  indeed  that  I  could  call  my  own." 

It  is  not  easy  to  realize  how  much  harm  is 
done    by    the    complaisant    laudator    temporis 


PERMANENT   LITERARY  STANDARDS  87 

praesentis  who  decries  all  attempts  of  serious 
critics  to  set  bounds  to  the  ambition  of  young 
aspirants  to  literary  laurels.  It  has  indeed 
always  been  an  ungrateful  task  to  check  imma- 
ture exuberance.  Lessing  wrote:  "We  have 
now  a  school  of  critics  whose  chief  criticism 
consists  in  throwing  suspicion  on  all  criticism. 
'Genius,  genius,'  they  repeat  endlessly.  'Genius 
disregards  all  rules.  What  genius  creates 
becomes  the  rule.'  Thus  they  flatter  genius — in 
my  opinion — in  order  that  they  may  be  regarded 
as  geniuses  themselves.  But  they  show  too 
clearly  that  they  have  not  a  spark  of  it  them- 
selves when  they  add  in  the  same  breath:  'Rules 
stifle  genius.'  As  if  genius  could  be  suppressed 
by  any  power  in  the  world!  .  .  .  Not  every 
critic  is  a  genius,  but  every  genius  is  a  born 
critic.    Genius  proves  its  own  rules." 

The  public  cannot  be  argued  into  mistaking 
mediocrity  for  genius,  nor  does  it  long  mistake 
genius  for  mediocrity.  But  the  effect  of  the 
so-called  kindly  critic  on  mediocre  authors  is 
disastrous.  He  not  only  encourages  feeble 
efifort,  but  literally  calls  it  into  being.  Dozens 
of  young  authors  spring  into  existence  and  find 


88  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

publishers  because  dozens  of  others  have  written 
before  them,  who,  thanks  to  the  plaudits  of 
undiscriminating  critics  and  the  thoughtlessness 
of  undiscriminating  readers,  achieved  a  fleeting 
notoriety.  It  is  a  misfortune  to  any  country  to 
have  its  literary  taste  debauched  by  critical  arbi- 
ters who  have  so  little  equipment  for  their  call- 
ing. France,  having  for  centuries  cherished 
veneration  for  literary  genius,  has  perhaps  set 
the  world  the  best  example  of  an  almost 
unbroken  line  of  critical  authorities,  of  whom 
Sainte-Beuve,  in  the  recent  past,  was  merely  the 
foremost  representative. 

The  trite  warning  to  the  sceptical  critic  to 
look  out  for  unrecognized  genius  need  scarcely 
be  met  by  the  obvious  observation  that  unmis- 
takable genius  cannot  be  mistaken,  and  that  even 
striking  talent  is  quick  to  find  recognition.  Nor 
is  it  profitable,  in  the  case  of  contemporaries,  to 
raise  the  question  of  the  diflference  between 
genius  and  talent.  Posterity  alone,  that  is  to  say, 
the  best  international  judgment,  in  the  ripeness 
of  time,  can  assign  to  creative  force  its  definite 
rank.  Grillparzer,  referring  to  the  extravagant 
claims  made  for  the  lawless  genius  we  all  so  w^ell 


PERMANENT  LITERARY   STANDARDS  89 

know,  penned  the  lines:  "Denn  das  Genie,  es 
laiift  in  alien  Gassen,  doch  seltener  als  je  ist 
das  Talent."  (Genius  indeed  may  be  met  with 
at  every  street  corner,  but  talent  is  scarcer  than 
ever.)  Goethe  has  said  the  final  word  on  the 
subject  in  his  remark: 

"What  is  genius  but  the  power  of  doing  deeds 
that  can  stand  before  God  and  Nature,  of  pro- 
ducing permanent  results?  All  of  Mozart's 
works  are  of  this  kind;  there  is  in  them  a  pro- 
ductive powTr  which  acts  upon  generation  after 
generation,  and  it  will  be  many  a  day  before 
that  is  exhausted.  This  is  equally  the  case  with 
other  great  composers  and  with  all  great  artists. 
How  potent  has  been  the  influence  upon  suc- 
ceeding centuries  of  Phidias  and  Raphael,  of 
Diirer,  and  Holbein!  He  who  first  invented  the 
forms  and  proportions  of  Old-German  archi- 
tecture, which  in  the  course  of  time  made  pos- 
sible the  Strassburg  Minster  and  the  Cologne 
Cathedral,  was  likewise  a  genius;  for  his 
thought  has  retained  its  productive  power  to  this 
day  and  still  exerts  its  influence.  Luther  was  a 
very  formidable  genius.  His  influence  has  lasted 
many  a  day,  and  we  cannot  foretell  how  many 


90  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

centuries  may  elapse  before  he  will  cease  to  be 
productive.  Lessing  disclaimed  the  lofty  title 
of  genius,  but  his  permanent  influence  tells 
against  his  disclaimer.  There  are  in  literature, 
on  the  other  hand,  other  great  names  who  during 
their  lifetime  were  considered  great  geniuses, 
but  whose  influence  ceased  with  their  life,  and 
who  therefore  were  less  important  than  they 
and  others  thought." 

It  is  the  crowning  merit  of  the  great  inter- 
national critics  that  they  held  their  balance  true. 
The  recognition  of  talent  never  led  them  to  over- 
praise its  power,  and  as  there  can  be  no  just 
criticism  of  others  which  is  not  based  on  the 
clear  recognition  of  one's  own  limitations,  so 
they  saw  clearly  what  they  themselves  could  and 
could  not  do.  Goethe  gave  a  striking  illustra- 
tion of  the  wholly  impersonal  attitude  of  self- 
criticism  in  an  oft-quoted  remark  concerning 
Tieck. 

'Tieck,"  he  said  to  Eckermann,  "is  a  man  of 
great  talent,  and  no  one  can  be  more  sensible  of 
his  great  merits  than  myself,  but  it  is  a  mistake 
to  raise  him  beyond  his  own  height  and  place 
him  on  the  same  level  with  me.     I  can  say  so 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  9 1 

plainly,  for  it  matters  nothing  to  me,  inasmuch 
as  I  have  not  made  myself.  I  should  act  simi- 
larly if  I  compared  myself  with  Shakespeare, 
who  also  did  not  make  himself,  but  who  is 
nevertheless  a  being  of  a  higher  order,  to  whom 
I  look  up  with  reverence."  Now  this  just  recog- 
nition of  the  limits  of  praise  is  precisely  what 
distinguishes  the  true  critic  from  his  counterfeit. 
Every  nation  furnishes  instances  of  this  inability 
''to  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us."  In  its  worst 
manifestation  it  leads  to  blind  chauvinism,  and 
it  is  a  national  calamity  if  great  literary  talent 
lends  its  influence  to  this  perversion  of  the  nat- 
ural love  of  one's  country.  It  would  be  easy 
to  point  to  conspicuous  examples  of  the  harm- 
ful stimulus  given  to  imperialistic  ideas  by 
seductive  poetic  appeals — ideas  which,  in  the 
long  run,  lead  only  to  national  isolation.  It 
may  be  said  without  exaggeration  that  the 
recrudescence  of  the  mediaeval  idea  accord- 
ing to  which  the  interests  of  nations  are  always 
opposed  to  each  other  is  fostered  by  the  thought- 
less literary  critic  who  magnifies  the  impor- 
tance of  the  achievements  of  his  own  country. 
Self-glorification    on    the    part    of    one    nation 


92  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

is  certain  to  arouse  self-glorification  on  the  part 
of  another.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  even  so 
eminent  a  critic  as  Hermann  Grimm  allowed 
himself  to  speak  of  Goethe's  Faust  as  "the  great- 
est work  of  the  greatest  poet  of  all  times  and  all 
nations" — a  statement  which  we  may  well  con- 
trast with  Goethe's  saner  estimate  of  himself  as 
compared  with  Shakespeare. 

As  we  turn  the  pages  of  the  masters  of  criti- 
cism, and  compare  their  ways  of  treating  the 
subjects  that  interested  them  in  common,  we  are 
struck,  above  all,  by  their  reverence  for  the 
past,  their  deference  to  the  great,  their  mod- 
eration and  modesty.  There  is  in  them  not  a 
trace  of  the  shallow  piquancy,  the  elaborate 
paradox,  the  cynical  self-complacency  of  the 
so-called  brilliant  critic  of  the  day.  No  coun- 
try in  the  world  needs  the  example  of  these 
sober,  self-respecting  and  respectful  men  of  let- 
ters more  than  ours,  where  the  teachings  of  our 
own  wise  men  of  the  past  are  in  danger  of  being 
forgotten.  We  shall,  let  us  hope,  again  see  the 
rise  of  literary  genius  among  us,  but  we  must 
beware  lest  we  lose  the  standards  by  which 
genius  is  measured.    What  avails  all  else  if  we 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  93 

lack  discrimination  and  self-restraint?  "To  miss 
decorum,"  says  Professor  Irving  Babbitt,  in  an 
article  on  Diderot,  "is  to  become  incapable  of 
what  is  best  in  art  and  literature  (not  to  speak 
of  life  itself)  ;  it  is  to  lose  the  secret  of  selection 
and  the  grand  manner." 

To  what  else  did  the  great  critics  owe  their 
influence  but  to  this  "secret  of  selection"?  They 
heard  the  call  of  the  present  as  we  do,  but  they 
never  exaggerated  its  claims,  and  they  felt  the 
need  of  going  back,  again  and  again,  to  the  great 
masters  who  have  permanently  enriched  the 
world.  He  who  does  not  feel  this  need  merely 
gives  proof  of  his  intellectual  poverty.  Surely, 
what  the  wisest  could  not  be  without,  lesser 
minds  can  ill  afford  to  spare.  No  one  returned 
more  constantly  to  the  perennial  sources  of  inspi- 
ration than  Goethe.  To  read  a  great  writer  or 
see  a  great  picture  was  a  constant  incentive  to 
read  and  see  again.  "Moliere,"  he  said  to 
Eckermann,  "is  so  great  that  he  astonishes  us 
anew  every  time  we  read  him.  He  stands  alone. 
...  I  read  several  of  his  plays  every  year,  just 
as,  from  time  to  time,  I  look  at  engravings  of 
pictures  by  the  Great  Italian  masters.     For  we 


94  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

small  men  are  not  able  to  preserve  within  us  the 
greatness  of  such  things,  and  must  therefore 
return  to  them  from  time  to  time  in  order  to 
refresh  our  impressions." 

It  is  idle  to  imagine  that  literary  genius  can 
afford  to  go  its  own  solitary  way,  scorning  knowl- 
edge, and  be  the  better  for  it.  The  gifted  minds 
may  select  their  own  manner  of  observing  and 
studying,  but  observe  and  study  they  must,  and 
ignorance  becomes  them  as  ill  as  it  does  the 
average  man.  Matthew  Arnold  has  well  said: 
"Wordsworth  cared  little  for  books,  and  dis- 
paraged Goethe.  I  admire  Wordsworth,  as  he 
is,  so  much  that  I  cannot  wish  him  different;  and 
it  is  vain,  no  doubt,  to  imagine  such  a  man  dif- 
ferent from  what  he  is,  to  suppose  that  he  could 
have  been  diflferent.  But  surely  the  one  thing 
wanting  to  make  Wordsworth  an  even  greater 
poet  than  he  is — his  thought  richer,  and  his 
influence  of  wider  application — was  that  he 
should  have  read  more  books,  among  them,  no 
doubt,  those  of  that  Goethe  whom  he  disparaged 
without  reading  them." 

If  we  learned  nothing  else  from  the  great 
writers,  we  could  still  profit  by  their  serenity. 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  95 

which  is  so  lamentably  absent  from  the  writing 
of  the  day.  They  found  pleasure  in  their  work 
and  they  gave  pleasure  to  the  reader.  The  mas- 
ter dramatists  wrote  no  problem  plays,  the  mas- 
ter novelists  no  pathological  novels,  the  master 
poets  no  morbid  poetry,  though  they  too  knew 
something  of  the  problems  of  mankind  and  the 
evils  of  society.  Goethe,  Grillparzer,  Sainte- 
Beuve  and  Lowell,  with  all  their  diversities  of 
temper  and  character,  wrote  in  a  serene  spirit. 
What  they  created  and  what  they  strove  for 
tended  to  make  the  world  better  and  happier. 
They  had  in  common  the  trait  which,  as  Emer- 
son says,  "properly  belongs  to  the  poet.  I  mean 
his  cheerfulness,  without  which  no  man  can  be 
a  poet,  for  beauty  is  his  aim.  .  .  .  The  true 
bards  have  been  noted  for  their  firm  and  cheer- 
ful temper."  Indeed,  the  practice  of  all  great 
critics  shows  that  cheerfulness  is  an  important 
part  of  their  creed.  The  serene  atmosphere 
w^hich  pervades  the  writings  of  Goethe,  Grill- 
parzer, Sainte-Beuve,  and  Lowell  is  the  result 
of  an  inner  enthusiasm  for  what  is  beautiful  and 
excellent,  and  enthusiasm  is  incompatible  with 
a  cynical  spirit.     Our  modern  brood  of  melan- 


96  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

choly,  formless,  paradoxical  and  insincere  writ- 
ers would  have  been  intolerable  to  these  critics, 
with  their  keen  detestation  of  sham.  There  were 
unhappy  poets  in  those  days  as  well,  but  who 
reads  them  to-day?  "All  the  poets,"  says 
Goethe,  "write  as  if  they  were  ill  and  the  whole 
world  a  hospital.  They  all  speak  of  the  woes 
and  the  miseries  of  this  earth  and  of  the  joys  of 
a  hereafter;  all  are  dissatisfied.  .  .  .  This  is  a 
real  abuse  of  poetry,  which  was  given  to  us  to 
hide  the  petty  discords  of  life  and  to  make  man 
contented  with  the  world  and  with  his  condi- 
tion." 

Lowell,  in  a  passage  of  whimsical  wisdom 
enforces  the  lesson  of  cheerfulness  in  modern 
life.  His  good  humor  smiles  through  his  very 
doubts.  "It  is  noteworthy  that  literature,  as  it 
becomes  more  modern,  becomes  also  more 
melancholy,  and  that  he  who  keeps  most  con- 
stantly to  the  minor  key  of  hopelessness,  or 
strikes  the  deepest  note  of  despair,  is  surest  of 
at  least  momentary  acclaim.  Nay,  do  not  some 
sources  of  happiness  flow  less  full  or  cease  to 
flow  as  settlement  and  sanitation  advance,  even 
as  the  feeders  of  our  streams  are  dried  by  the 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  97 

massacre  of  our  forests?  We  cannot  have  a  new 
boulevard  in  Florence  unless  at  sacrifice  of  those 
ancient  city-walls  in  which  inspiring  memories 
had  for  so  many  ages  built  their  nests  and  reared 
their  broods  of  song.  Did  not  the  plague, 
brooded  and  hatched  in  those  smotherers  of 
fresh  air,  the  slits  that  thoroughfared  the  older 
town,  give  us  the  Decameron?  And  was  the 
price  too  high?  We  cannot  widen  and  venti- 
late the  streets  of  Rome  without  grievous  wrong 
to  the  city  that  we  loved,  and  yet  it  is  well  to 
remember  that  this  city  too  had  built  itself  out  of 
and  upon  the  ruins  of  that  nobler  Rome  which 
gave  it  all  the  wizard  hold  it  had  on  our  imagi- 
nation. The  Social  Science  Congress  rejoices  in 
changes  that  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  the 
painter  and  the  poet.  Alas!  we  cannot  have  a 
world  made  expressly  for  Mr.  Ruskin,  nor  keep 
it  if  we  could,  more's  the  pity.  Are  we  to  con- 
fess, then,  that  the  world  grows  less  lovable  as 
it  grows  more  convenient  and  comfortable?  that 
beauty  flees  before  the  step  of  the  Social 
Reformer  as  the  wild  pensioners  of  Nature 
before  the  pioneers?  that  the  lion  will  lie  down 
with  the  lamb  sooner  than  picturesqueness  with 


98  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

health  and  prosperity?  Morally,  no  doubt,  we 
are  bound  to  consider  the  Greatest  Good  of  the 
Greatest  Number,  but  there  is  something  in  us, 
vagula,  blandula,  that  refuses,  and  rightly 
refuses,  to  be  Benthamized;  that  asks  itself  in  a 
timid  whisper,  'Is  it  so  certain,  then,  that  the 
Greatest  Good  is  also  the  Highest?  and  has  it 
been  to  the  Greatest  or  to  the  Smallest  Num- 
ber that  man  has  been  most  indebted?'  For 
myself,  while  I  admit,  because  I  cannot  help  it, 
certain  great  and  manifest  improvements  in  the 
general  well-being,  I  cannot  stifle  a  suspicion 
that  the  Modern  Spirit,  to  whose  tune  we  are 
marching  so  cheerily,  may  have  borrowed  of  the 
Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin  the  instrument  whence 
he  draws  such  bewitching  music." 

What  chiefly  repels  the  cautious  observer  of 
the  various  manifestations  of  the  modern  spirit 
in  literature  is  its  vociferous  positiveness  and 
pretence.  The  watchword  "progress"  covers  a 
multitude  of  reactionary  sins.  In  the  general 
rejection  of  the  standards  of  the  past  which  we 
are  told  must  give  place  to  the  nameless  wisdom 
of  an  unknown  future,  we  simply  go  back  to 
ancient  barbarism.     The  devotees  of  "natural- 


PERMANENT  LITERARY  STANDARDS  99 

ism"  have  wisely  chosen  their  designation. 
They  have  flung  civilization  to  the  winds  and 
returned  to  the  state  of  savage  nature.  Little  do 
they  reck  or  care  what  mankind  loses  in  the 
process. 

How  far  have  we  wandered,  in  these  days 
when  every  literary  aspirant  insists  on  the 
righteousness  of  his  own  gospel,  from  the  exam- 
ple of  the  great  critics,  whose  whole  activity 
showed  that  they  had  no  tolerance  for  the  gospel 
of  infallibility,  either  in  individuals  or  nations. 
"Let  no  one  in^agine,"  said  the  wise  Goethe, 
"that  the  world  has  been  waiting  for  him  as  for 
a  Messiah."  Modern  literature  is  perpetually 
on  the  lookout  for  some  new  prophet.  Salva- 
tion is  to  come  now  from  one  new  preacher,  now 
from  another — the  text  does  not  matter,  so  it  be 
new  and  startling. 

Can  the  world  in  the  long  run  dispense  with 
simplicity  and  loveliness  and  lose  the  posses- 
sions which  make  literature  and  life  precious? 
"We  cannot  yet  afford,"  answers  Emerson,  "to 
drop  Homer,  nor  /Eschylus,  nor  Plato,  nor 
Aristotle,  nor  Archimedes."  Posterity  will  not 
side  with  the  modern  critics  who  encourage  the 


lOO  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

turbulent  lawlessness  of  the  moderns;  for  praise 
of  the  ignoble  is  not  only  an  offence  against 
aesthetics,  but  against  the  very  order  of  society. 
Literary  conscience  concerns  itself  with  deeper 
things  than  novelty  of  theme  and  piquancy  of 
treatment,  and  the  sense  of  beauty  refuses  to  be 
satisfied  with  the  realistic  search  for  the  surface 
truth  of  things.  Goethe  has  said  a  beautiful 
word  on  this  subject: 

''Until  recently  the  world  believed  in  the 
heroism  of  a  Lucretia  or  of  a  Mucius  Scaevola, 
and  this  belief  inspired  us  with  warmth  and 
enthusiasm.  But  now  historical  criticism  tells 
us  that  those  heroes  never  lived  and  must  be 
considered  as  fables  and  fictions  produced  by 
the  lofty  imagination  of  the  Romans.  But  of 
what  use  is  such  paltry  truth  to  us?  If  the 
Romans  were  great  enough  to  invent  such 
heroes,  we  ought  at  least  to  be  great  enough  to 
believe  in  them." 

It  is  this  recognition  of  the  power  of  the 
deeper  truth,  this  seriousness  of  purpose,  this 
perennial  search  for  wisdom  and  loveliness,  that 
made  the  master  critics  what  they  are. 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN    THE 
PHILOSOPHER 

Few  works  dealing  with  philosophic  ques- 
tions in  a  popular  form  have  been  as  successful 
as  Feuchtersleben's  Hygiene  of  the  Soul  (Zur 
Didtetik  der  Seele).  Published  originally  in 
1838,  at  Vienna,  it  has  maintained  its  interest 
to  this  day.  The  book  has  been  translated  into 
several  languages,  but  the  personality  of  its 
author  is  still  practically  unknown  to  American 
readers.  Yet  literature  contains  few  nobler  lives 
than  that  of  Ernst  Baron  von  Feuchtersleben. 

Grillparzer,  whose  caustic  pen  spared  few 
contemporary  celebrities,  wrote,  in  1851,  of  the 
philosopher  as  follows: 

'T  became  acquainted  with  Feuchtersleben  at 
a  comparatively  late  period.  Therefore  and 
because  our  relations  were  mainly  of  a  literary 
nature,  I  know  practically  nothing  of  his  pre- 
vious life,  and  must  limit  myself  to  remarks  con- 
cerning his  character  and  his  intellect.  These 
are  fairly  open  to  the  scrutiny  of  others;  his  own 
innate  and  most  genuine  modesty  would  under 

[101] 


I02  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

any   circumstances    have   prevented   him    from 
alluding  to  his  personal  afifairs. 

"Married  to  a  woman  who  was  the  opposite 
of  himself  as  to  habits,  temperament  and  edu- 
cation, he  succeeded  by  yielding  no  less  than 
insisting,  by  his  intellectual  superiority  and  his 
easy  good  nature,  in  creating  for  himself  a 
wedded  happiness  the  perfection  of  which  has 
perhaps  never  been  equalled.  This  alone,  while 
testifying  to  the  strength  of  his  character,  marks 
him  as  what  he  was  in  every  respect — a  truly 
wise  man. 

''Honesty,  truthfulness,  kindliness  and  mod- 
esty formed  the  basis  of  his  character.  He  had 
the  right  to  say  of  himself:  'I  have  had  to  fight 
for  whatever  I  am,'  for  he  never  surrendered  a 
conviction,  or  deviated  from  the  strictest  path  of 
duty,  in  order  to  gain  an  advantage. 

"In  speaking  of  his  truthfulness,  I  do  not 
mean  truthful  merely  in  his  relation  to  others, 
for  that  is  included  in  the  very  term  'honesty'; 
I  mean  truthful  toward  himself — a  quality 
which  has  become  rare  nowadays,  particularly 
in  Germany.  He  never  simulated  great  ideas, 
improvised    convictions,    cherished    imaginary 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       103 

cravings.  Not  only  in  this  thoughts,  but  in  his 
feelings,  he  was  true  and  consistent.  He  knew 
the  limits  of  his  capacity,  and  would  not  have 
overstepped  them  if  a  hundred  journals  had 
offered  him  pecuniary  inducements. 

"No  field  of  human  knowledge  appears  to 
have  been  strange  to  him.  In  the  domain  of 
philosophy  Kant  was  the  man  after  his  own 
heart.  That  philosophy  of  modesty,  the  cul- 
minating point  of  whose  system  is  the  humble: 
^I  know  not,'  a  philosophy  which  starts  with  a 
body  of  facts  that  neither  requires  proof  nor  can 
be  made  to  yield  it,  which  is  quite  content  to 
comprise  within  itself  all  that  is  logically  cor- 
rect and  conducive  to  the  moral  welfare  of  all, 
which,  precisely  because  it  sets  bounds  to 
thought,  makes  it  possible  for  man's  aspiration 
and  emotion  to  fill  the  existing  gap  by  religion 
and  art — Kant's  philosophy  was  also  Feuchters- 
leben's. 

"His  chief  doctrine  and  his  own  aim  and 
practice  were  the  attainment  of  culture,  that  is 
to  say,  the  fullest  development  and  harmonious 
agreement  of  all  intellectual  faculties  and  nat- 
ural gifts.     Hence  Goethe  was  his  ideal.     He 


I04  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

watched  with  the  most  genuine  devotion  the 
unfolding  of  youthful  talent,  even  in  those  writ- 
ers whose  works  were  in  no  way  influenced  by 
him;  he  was  intent,  in  his  criticism,  on  dwelling 
upon  every  good  point,  emphasizing  each  happy 
turn  and  thought,  always  looking  for  the  hidden 
meaning,  endeavoring  to  supplement  and  sug- 
gest what  was  lacking,  and  entering  wholly  into 
the  author's  intentions.  He  was  untiring  in 
critical  appreciations  of  this  sort.  That  is  what 
I  meant  in  speaking  of  his  kindliness.  His  self- 
sacrificing  devotion,  joined  to  all  his  other  quali- 
ties, completed  a  nature  endowed  with  the  most 
perfect  charm." 

Ernst  Baron  von  Feuchtersleben  was  born  in 
Vienna,  on  the  29th  of  April,  1806.  He  was 
descended  from  a  Saxon  family  who  had  set- 
tled in  Austria  at  the  beginning  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  His  father,  whom  the  son 
describes  as  ''a  man  of  serious  and  stern  charac- 
ter, devoted  to  his  civic  duties  in  a  spirit  of  tire- 
less self-sacrifice,"  attained  the  rank  of  aulic 
councillor  in  the  Austrian  civil  service.  The 
child,  delicate  and  early  left  motherless,  passed 
his  first  years  in  the  country,  and  at  the  age  of 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       1 05 

six  was  placed  in  the  Theresianische  Akademie 
at  Vienna,  an  institution  where  the  sons  of  noble- 
men were  educated  for  the  service  of  the  state. 
There  he  remained  until  his  nineteenth  year. 
The  education  he  received  was,  according  to  his 
own  statement,  "wholly  WTong.  The  instruc- 
tion was  in  the  hands  of  priests,  over  whom  was 
placed  a  soldier.  I  saw  the  talents  of  the  most 
promising  young  men  wither  away  under  the 
influence  of  priestly  pride  and  soldierly  bru- 
tality. Twice  every  day,  not  infrequently  three 
times,  we  had  to  go  to  church,  and  thus  every 
religious  feeling  was  stifled  in  us.  However, 
men  develop  regardless  of  wind  and  weather 
and  tyranny,  and  I  saw  under  this  system  young 
men  grow  up  whose  brows  bore  the  stamp  of 
Sparta  and  Rome." 

There  was,  indeed,  a  good  deal  of  the  Spartan 
in  young  Feuchtersleben  himself.  His  teacher 
of  history,  the  enlightened  Father  Boniface, 
fired  his  susceptible  heart  with  his  tales  of 
antique  stoicism.  Friedrich  Hebbel,  the  editor 
of  Feuchtersleben's  w^orks,  relates  that  the  young 
inmate  of  the  Theresianum  at  one  time  resolved 
to  do  without  his  bed,  and  slept  many  nights  on 


Io6  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

the  bare  floor;  in  order  to  train  his  will-power 
still  further,  he  left  his  favorite  dishes  untouched 
and  half  starved  himself.  He  even  refused  to 
avail  himself  of  the  occasional  permission  to 
visit  his  paternal  home,  much  as  he  longed  for  it. 
He  gave  a  still  greater  proof  of  his  self-control 
when  one  of  his  closest  friends,  in  order  to  test 
his  moral  strength,  accused  him  publicly  of 
some  delinquency  of  which  he  himself  had  been 
guilty.  Feuchtersleben,  after  having  heard  who 
his  accuser  was,  silently  submitted  to  punish- 
ment, and  when  his  friend,  bursting  into  tears, 
craved  his  forgiveness,  he  quietly  answered:  "I 
only  regret  that  you  found  it  necessary  to  resort 
to  a  lie  in  order  to  learn  the  strength  of  my 
friendship  for  you." 

With  all  its  defects,  the  Theresianum  fur- 
nished the  eager  young  student  sound  instruc- 
tion in  the  classics  and  the  natural  sciences.  He 
found  abundant  opportunity  to  indulge  his 
poetic  fancy  as  well  as  his  early  tendency  toward 
philosophic  reflection.  In  addition  to  the 
ancient  thinkers,  he  studied  Spinoza,  Lessing, 
Herder,  Kant,  Schiller  and  Goethe.  Much 
against   his    father's    will,    Feuchtersleben,    on 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       107 

leaving  the  academy,  decided  to  study  medicine. 
He  entered  the  University  of  Vienna  in  1825, 
and  in  the  same  year,  at  the  age  of  nineteen, 
published  two  philosophic  papers — "On  the 
Study  of  Nature"  and  "Concerning  Genius." 
He  remained  nearly  nine  years  at  the  university, 
engaged  in  the  study  of  medicine,  physiology, 
philosophy,  aesthetics,  and  Oriental  literature. 
In  an  autobiographic  memoir — a  model  of  mod- 
est brevity — which  Feuchtersleben  prepared,  in 
1849,  for  the  Vienna  Academy  of  Sciences,  of 
which  he  had  been  elected  a  member,  he  alludes 
to  the  inspiration  which  he  derived  during  his 
academic  years  from  a  circle  of  intimate  friends 
which  included,  among  others  who  later 
achieved  fame,  the  composer  Franz  Schubert. 

Shortly  after  Feuchtersleben  had  taken  his 
degree  of  doctor  of  medicine,  in  1834,  his  father, 
in  a  fit  of  nervous  despondency,  committed  sui- 
cide, and  the  young  physician  and  his  only 
brother  were  left  absolutely  without  means. 
Nevertheless,  Feuchtersleben  was  courageous 
enough  to  marry  the  girl  to  whom  he  had  long 
been  paying  court,  and  to  enter  upon  the  prac- 
tice of  medicine.    The  results  of  his  professional 


Io8  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

activity  were  pitifully  meagre.  The  few 
patients  whom  he  found,  abashed  by  his  baronial 
title,  hesitated  to  ofifer  him  a  pecuniary  compen- 
sation for  his  services,  and  sent  him  instead  some 
token  of  their  gratitude,  generally  useless  trin- 
kets, so  that  the  young  couple  were  soon  in  the 
grip  of  the  most  grinding  poverty.  They  were 
compelled  to  spend  their  evenings  in  the  dark, 
as  they  could  not  afford  the  luxury  of  a  candle 
light.  Fortunately,  Feuchtersleben's  literary 
ability  enabled  him  gradually  to  eke  out  a  mod- 
est living.  He  wrote  articles  on  historical, 
philosophical  and  aesthetic  subjects  for  some 
Vienna  periodicals,  and  published  in  1835  his 
first  medical  work.  Professor  Max  Neuburger, 
in  his  memorial  address  on  Feuchtersleben, 
delivered  at  the  Vienna  Medical  Society  on  the 
hundredth  anniversary  of  his  birth,  speaks  of 
this  work,  Ueber  das  hippokratische  erste  Buck 
von  der  Diat,  as  "one  of  the  gems  of  medico- 
historical  literature." 

The  Hygiene  of  the  Soul  was  not  originally 
written  for  publication.  In  his  autobiographic 
data  for  the  Vienna  Academy  of  Sciences 
Feuchtersleben  modestly  remarks:  'T  may  per- 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       109 

haps  take  occasion  to  speak  in  this  place  of  the 
influence  exerted,  much  to  my  astonishment,  by 
a  little  book,  similar  in  spirit  to  the  work  just 
mentioned  [a  treatise  on  psychiatry],  but  written 
for  an  entirely  different  purpose.  This  little 
book,  entitled  Zur  Didtetik  der  Seele,  was  really 
the  result  of  silent  self-contemplation  after  many 
trials  and  much  suffering,  and  was  intended  as 
a  solace  to  myself  only.  The  kindly  interest  of 
a  few  friends,  who  had  read  some  parts  in  manu- 
script, is  alone  responsible  for  the  publication 
of  the  book.  1  had  no  reason  to  expect  a  loud 
resDonse  and  never  looked  for  one.  But  the  old 
habent  sua  fata  libelli  once  more  proved  true, 
and  I  attained  a  result  that  took  me  completely 
by  surprise.  Judging  from  many  remarks  and 
letters  that  reached  me,  it  looked  as  if  during  a 
period  of  public  agitation  a  faithful  observer  of 
his  own  emotions  had  succeeded  in  touching  the 
minds  of  others  so  as  to  call  forth  an  imme- 
diate response,  rousing  them,  as  it  were,  to  a 
consciousness  of  what  had  been  felt  by  all,  with- 
out having  been  uttered  by  anyone." 

The  success  of  the  book  was  instantaneous. 
Feuchtersleben's  place  in  the  medical  circles  of 


no  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Vienna,  as  well  as  in  literature,  was  now  secure. 
In  1839  appeared  his  treatise,  Ueber  die  Gewiss- 
heit  und  Wiirde  der  Heilkunst  (Concerning  the 
Precision  and  Dignity  of  Medical  Science),  of 
which  Professor  Neuburger,  in  the  memorial 
address  referred  to,  says :  "Never  have  the  cause 
of  the  medical  profession  and  the  dignity  of 
medical  science  been  upheld  with  more  profun- 
dity and  moral  fervor.  Indeed,  the  present 
moment  seems  most  opportune  for  a  republica- 
tion of  this  work." 

Feuchtersleben's  merits  as  a  medical  thinker 
and  writer  were  acknowledged  by  his  election, 
in  1840,  as  Secretary  of  the  Vienna  Society  of 
Physicians,  a  position  in  which  he  displayed 
during  a  number  of  years  the  greatest  zeal  and 
ability.  In  1841  appeared  the  epoch-making 
Pathological  Anatomy  of  Rokitansky,  and 
Feuchtersleben,  says  Professor  Neuburger,  was 
foremost  among  Vienna  scientists  in  seizing  the 
importance  of  that  work  and  of  the  equally  sig- 
nificant diagnostic  discoveries  of  Skoda.*  In 
his  papers   read  before  the   Society  of   Physi- 

*  Joseph  Skoda  (1805-81),  Professor  at  the  University  of 
Vienna,  whose  Abhandlung  iiber  die  Anskultation  und  Perkussion 
marked  a  new  era  in  medical  diagnostics. 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       1 1 1 

cians  he  "arrived  at  deductions  which  are  con- 
firmed, in  their  entirety,  by  the  subsequent 
development  of  medical  science." 

In  1844  Feuchtersleben  began  his  famous  lec- 
tures on  medical  psychology,  as  the  first  incum- 
bent of  that  chair  at  the  University  of  Vienna. 
The  students  thronged  his  lecture  room  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  professors  whose  hours  coin- 
cided with  his  own  found  their  rooms  deserted. 
The  results  of  these  lectures  were  embodied  in 
his  Lehrbuch  der  drztiichen  Seelenkunde, 
which  appeared  in  London,  in  1847,  as  "The 
Principles  of  Medical  Psychology."  The  work 
was  described  by  the  English  editors  as  "remark- 
able for  the  clear  and  methodical  arrangement 
of  its  matter,  for  its  depth  of  erudition  and 
research,  and  for  the  impartial  and  philosophi- 
cal spirit  in  which  it  is  written." 

In  1845  ^he  medical  faculty  of  the  University 
of  Vienna  elected  Feuchtersleben  as  its  dean. 
But  although  adored  by  the  students,  and 
acknowledged  everywhere  as  one  of  the  leading 
lights  among  the  professors,  he  despaired  of  his 
ability  to  carry  out  any  of  the  reforms  in  the 
educational    life    of    Austria    which    were    so 


112  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

urgently  called  for  by  every  friend  of  progress 
and  so  dear  to  his  own  heart.  Metternich's  rule 
stifled  every  manifestation  of  independence  and 
liberalism  in  the  university,  as  in  the  public 
schools.  The  influence  of  the  clergy  was  para- 
mount and  the  press  was  muzzled.  "Where 
there  is  neither  intelligence  nor  morality,"" 
Feuchtersleben  wrote  in  his  diary,  after  enter- 
ing upon  his  duties  as  dean,  "I  am  power- 
less to  accomplish  anything."  Nevertheless,  his 
personality  so  impressed  itself  upon  his  col- 
leagues and  the  governing  classes  that,  in  1847, 
he  was  appointed  "Vice-Director  of  Medico- 
Surgical  Studies,"  a  position  which  placed  him 
at  the  head  of  the  conferences  held  by  the  entire 
body  of  university  professors.  Among  his  pub- 
lic utterances  as  dean  was  a  remarkable  address 
delivered,  in  the  presence  of  the  court-chancel- 
lor, in  April,  1847,  in  which  he  outlined  a  plan 
for  the  complete  reform  of  public  education, 
with  academic  freedom  as  its  corner  stone. 
What  he  then  advocated  was  more  emphatically 
insisted  on  in  the  petitions  to  the  government, 
drawn  up  at  Feuchtersleben's  instigation,  in 
March  and  April,  1848,  when  the  progress  of 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       1 1 3 

the  revolutionary  movement  emboldened  the 
champions  of  liberty  to  formulate  their  demands 
in  unmistakable  terms. 

In  the  following  July  Feuchtersleben  was 
offered  the  portfolio  of  Public  Instruction  in  the 
liberal  Cabinet  which  had  assumed  power.  He 
refused  the  ofTfer,  but  agreed  to  take  the  position 
of  Under  Secretary  in  the  ministry  of  Public 
Instruction,  where  he  thought  he  could  wholly 
devote  himself,  free  from  direct  political  respon- 
sibility, to  the  task  of  educational  reform.*  The 
place  of  Vice-Director  of  Medico-Surgical 
Studies,  which  he  temporarily  resigned,  was  to 
be  kept  open  for  him.  He  threw  himself  into 
his  new  duties  with  all  the  ardor  of  his  soul. 
"I  may  say,"  he  wrote  in  a  memoir  submitted 
to  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  "there  could  be  no 
more  congenial  task  for  me.  It  fulfilled  all  my 
desires  and  suited  perfectly  whatever  capacity 
I  had.    Thus  I  ventured  to  make  the  attempt." 

The  educational  reforms  efifected  by  Feuch- 


*  Feuchtersleben's  modest  preference  for  the  inferior  position 
recalls  Condorcet's  refusal  to  accept  the  post  of  Inspector  of 
Coinage  offered  him  by  Turgot,  which  refusal  he  coupled  with 
the  suggestion  that  he  be  entrusted  with  the  task  of  carrying 
out  some  minor  reforms. 


114  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

tersleben  in  the  four  months  during  which  he 
held  office  were  of  the  most  far-reaching  char- 
acter. Measures  of  this  kind,  which  necessi- 
tated the  removal  of  professors  who  had  out- 
grown their  usefulness  by  younger  men,  created 
much  ill-feeling  against  their  author,  and  this 
was  augmented  by  the  impatience  of  the  revolu- 
tionary hotspurs  in  whose  eyes  the  pace  of  wise 
Feuchtersleben  was  not  rapid  enough.  The 
events  of  October,  1848 — the  fury  of  street 
mobs,  the  flight  of  the  Emperor,  the  murder  of 
the  War  Minister,  Count  Latour — which  fore- 
shadowed the  speedy  triumph  of  the  reactionary 
powers,  forced  him  to  tender  his  resignation. 
"He  had  come  into  conflict,"  says  Grillparzer, 
"with  something  utterly  antagonistic  to  his 
nature — brute  force."  Feuchtersleben  intended 
to  re-enter  upon  his  duties  at  the  university  as 
professor  and  vice-director,  but  all  the  members 
of  the  faculty,  swayed  by  various  motives, 
joined  in  an  official  protest  to  the  new  ministry 
against  his  resumption  of  these  offices.  Deeply 
wounded,  Feuchtersleben  retired  into  private 
life.  He  busied  himself  with  outlining  a  his- 
tory of  education  and  wrote  some  lectures  on 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN  THE  PHILOSOPHER       1 1  ij 

anthropology,  but  his  physical  strength  was 
unequal  to  the  shock  sustained.  He  lingered 
four  months  in  the  grasp  of  an  agonizing 
malady,  which,  however,  could  not  wholly  extin- 
guish the  serenity  of  his  soul.  "For  entire  days," 
says  the  poet  Hebbel,  "he  lay  motionless,  his 
eyes  fixed  upon  one  object,  and  uttered  not  a 
single  word;  but  when  night  came  he  grew 
talkative  and  enjoyed  the  company  of  his  faith- 
ful wife;  he  took  an  interest  in  everybody  and 
everything,  and  sometimes  even  his  old  humor 
and  gaiety  returned.  It  seemed  as  though  his 
strength  increased  tov/ard  evening  and  fled  with 
the  morning — as  though  the  sun  had  ceased  to 
hold  out  blessings  to  him  and  had  made  way  for 
the  stars."  He  expired  September  3,  1848,  in 
his  forty-fourth  year.  His  death  aroused 
Austria  to  a  sense  of  her  loss.  The  leading  citi- 
zens of  Vienna  followed  the  remains  of  her 
noble  son  to  their  resting  place,  and  his  praises 
resounded  far  beyond  the  confines  of  the  mon- 
archy. English  scholars  and  physicians  assem- 
bled to  do  honor  to  his  memory,  and  French 
scientific  bodies  sent,  posthumously,  a  diploma 
in  recognition  of  his  achievements.    Nearly  two 


Il6  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

years  elapsed,  owing  to  the  political  unrest, 
before  the  Medical  Society  of  Vienna  could 
assemble  to  do  justice  to  Feuchtersleben's  ser- 
vices to  science  and  humanity. 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL 

FeucHTERSLEBEN's  treatise  is,  in  its  essence, 
a  plea  for  moral,  intellectual,  and  physical 
health  through  the  exercise  of  will  power. 
Firmness  of  will,  he  reasons,  makes  us  what  we 
are,  and  as  all  created  beings  represent  merely 
force  in  action,  man's  best  possession  is  the 
energy  with  w^hich  he  asserts  himself,  even 
though  it  be  but  energy  imposed  upon  him  from 
without.  If  it  does  not  spring  spontaneously 
from  his  own  breast,  let  him,  by  a  supreme 
effort,  put  himself  in  a  condition  where  his  will 
must  obey. 

Feuchtersleben  claims  for  the  human  will  not 
only  an  inherent  power  of  resistance  to  dele- 
terious influences,  but  would  have  us  exercise 
our  will  power  aggressively,  so  as  to  keep  the 
body  in  good  health.  In  so  far  as  the  mind 
influences  the  development  of  the  body,  that 
influence  will  manifest  itself  in  bodily  beauty 
as  well  as  in  bodily  health.  Emotional  habits 
and  the  exercise  of  the  will  determine  character 
and  guide  the  spontaneous  movements  of  the 

muscles,  hence  they  determine  the  facial   fea- 

[117] 


Il8  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

tures,  which  express  what  we  generally  call 
beauty  or  its  opposite.  Every  oft-repeated 
facial  trait,  be  it  smiling,  crying,  twitching, 
sneering  or  frowning,  leaves  its  trace  in  the  soft 
parts  of  the  face,  recording,  as  it  were,  what  has 
taken  place,  and  making  each  successive  repro- 
duction of  the  act  easier,  until  finally  the  imprint 
on  the  muscles  and  tissues  becomes  permanent. 
And  the  play  of  the  muscles  cannot  continue 
long  without  leaving  its  traces  on  the  under- 
lying bony  structure.  Passionate  persons  have 
in  old  age  far  more  facial  wrinkles  than  those 
of  a  placid  disposition;  their  skin  is  much  more 
frequently  contracted  and  expanded  by  their 
gestures,  and  the  resulting  lines,  consequently, 
remain  forever. 

What  takes  place  in  the  tender  parts  which 
give  the  face  its  expression,  occurs  equally  in 
other  organs  of  the  human  system.  When  we 
are  freed  from  oppressive  care  we  draw  a  deep 
breath,  and  the  chest  necessarily  expands  in 
doing  so.  Repeated  action  of  this  kind  is  cer- 
tain to  affect  favorably  the  respiratory  organs. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  whose  circulation  is 
impeded  by  depressing  emotional  suffering  and 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  119 

who  continues  to  languish,  will  not  escape  the 
consequences  of  such  a  condition,  as  shown  in 
diminished  secretion,  impaired  nutrition,  etc. 
The  earlier  in  life  and  the  more  frequently  such 
conditions  occur — the  greater  their  intensity 
and  their  influence  upon  the  temperament  of  the 
individual — the  more  inevitable  and  the  more 
plainly  manifest  will  be  the  imprint,  in  form 
and  action,  upon  the  body  throughout  life.  The 
human  organism  represents  a  living  circle,  all 
parts  of  wiiich  work  together  in  close  inter- 
action. The  story  told  by  the  pale,  wrinkled 
face  is  also  betrayed  by  the  feeble  voice,  the 
faltering  step,  the  characterless  handwriting, 
the  irresolute  mood,  by  susceptibility  to  changes 
of  weather,  and  the  liability  to  the  inroads  of 
disease.  The  body  is  poisoned,  or — as  the  case 
may  be — preserved  and  healed  by  the  products 
of  the  seed  sown  by  the  mind.  Beauty  itself  is 
in  a  certain  sense  but  the  outward  token  of 
health;  the  harmony  of  all  bodily  functions 
shows  itself  in  the  harmonious  result — beauty  of 
form.  If  thus  virtue  beautifies  and  vice  vitiates, 
who  will  deny  that  virtue  preserves  health,  while 
vice  promotes  disease? 


I20  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

Nature's  judgments  are  secret;  they  are  ren- 
dered slowly,  but  infallibly;  she  keeps  account 
even  of  those  transgressions  which  shun  the  eyes 
of  men  and  are  not  amenable  to  their  laws.  Her 
actions,  eternal  as  everything  that  emanates 
from  the  source  of  all  power,  extend  from  gen- 
eration to  generation,  and  the  late  descendant, 
who  despairingly  broods  over  the  secret  of  his 
sufferings,  may  find  the  solution  in  the  sins  of 
his  forefathers.  But,  in  proportion  as  we  recog- 
nize that  weakness  and  disease  are  due  to  moral 
rather  than  physical  causes  shall  we  approach 
the  cure;  only  we  must  begin  with  practices  of 
a  much  higher  sort  than  cold  baths  and  the 
hardening  of  our  children  in  accordance  with 
the  theories  of  Rousseau  and  other  reformers. 
Physicians,  who  are  often  charged  with  being 
too  materialistic,  may  meet  the  reproach  by  tak- 
ing a  hint  from  the  moralist  and  the  priest.  The 
true  physician  will  see  the  road  to  salvation  as 
clearly  as  they. 

There  are  human  beings  so  happily  endowed 
by  nature  that  their  moral  development  pro- 
ceeds with  great  ease;  they  may  be  said  to  pos- 
sess moral  genius,  just  as  we  speak  of  genius  in 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  121 

art.  Such  exceptional  beings  were  Marcus 
Aurelius,  Socrates,  Howard,  and  Penn.  In  indi- 
viduals possessing  this  endowment  the  harmony 
of  their  existence  will  unmistakably  manifest 
itself,  even  where,  as  in  the  case  of  Socrates,  the 
struggle  of  the  mind  with  the  imperfections  of 
the  body  is  apparent.  The  scattered  rays  of  an 
inner  light,  illumining,  as  it  were,  the  body,  are 
all  the  more  glorious  to  behold.  The  saying  of 
Apollonius,  "There  are  blossoms  even  in  wrin- 
kles," is  as  true  to-day  as  of  yore. 

Modern  psychologists,  says  Feuchtersleben, 
reproach  those  of  a  former  day  with  having  split 
up  and  destroyed,  as  it  were,  the  unity  of  the 
human  mind  by  ascribing  to  it  a  number  of 
greater  and  lesser  functions,  such  as  reason, 
intellect,  higher  and  lower  desires,  imagination, 
memory,  etc.  In  so  far  as  these  so-called  func- 
tions were  represented  as  agencies  acting  accord- 
ing to  special  law^s,  the  criticism  is  well- 
founded;  for  the  human  intellect  is  a  complete 
and  indivisible  w^hole,  and  its  apparent  parts  are 
but  the  various  forms  of  its  activity.  These 
forms,  however,  are  clearly  distinct  from  each 
other,  and  may  well  be  considered  each  by  itself. 


122  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

The  sum  and  substance  of  all  our  activities  is 
revealed  in  but  three  ways :  we  are  able  to  think, 
to  feel,  and  to  will.  This  makes  up  the  whole  of 
man,  the  essence  of  his  nature  and  his  aims.  In 
philosophic  language,  it  comprises  "the  totality 
of  his  reasoning,  imagining,  and  striving." 
Thoughts  are,  as  it  were,  the  food,  emotions 
the  atmosphere,  and  the  acts  of  the  will  the  pro- 
pelling force  of  our  intellectual  life. 

Assuming  that  there  is  a  progressive  order  in 
the  realm  of  the  mind,  we  shall  assign  the  low- 
est rank  to  the  imagination  and  the  highest  to 
reason,  the  will  occupying  a  place  between  the 
two.  Such  at  least  is  the  order  in  which  the 
functions  of  the  mind  are  developed  during  life. 
The  child  lets  his  imagination  run  riot,  youth 
has  the  expanding  and  fructifying  force  of 
the  intellectual  organism  and  connects  its  vari- 
ous parts  with  one  another.  Without  this  regu- 
lating force  our  ideas  would  become  stagnant, 
our  conceptions  would  remain  rigid  and  lifeless, 
our  sensations  coarse  and  sensual. 

Kant  has  said  that  the  propelling  power  of 
imagination  is  more  direct  than  that  of  any 
merely  mechanical  agency.     He   remarks  that 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  123 

he  who  is  very  fond  of  social  pleasures  will  eat 
with  far  greater  appetite  than  one  who  has  spent 
two  hours  on  horseback,  and  cheerful  books  he 
believes  to  be  more  conducive  to  health  than 
physical  exercise.  In  this  sense  he  considers 
dreaming  as  a  sort  of  exercise  in  sleep,  provided 
by  nature  in  order  to  keep  the  wheels  of  the 
human  system  going. 

The  power  of  imagination  consists  merely  in 
the  ability  to  grasp  the  non-real,  and  with  this 
ability  are  implanted  in  us  the  germs  of  happi- 
ness or  misery.  If  the  growth  of  the  imagina- 
tion is  unchecked,  we  walk  in  day  dreams  and 
stand  at  the  threshold  of  insanity.  Yet  imagina- 
tion exercises  its  slow  and  continuous  influence 
on  all  of  us.  We  may  say  that  it  dwells  within 
us  before  we  are  conscious  of  our  existence,  and 
it  almost  survives  us,  as  in  all  those  conditions 
where  reflection  is  overpowered  by  obscure 
imaginings.  It  is  most  potent  in  infancy  and  it 
is  with  us  in  sleep  and  insanity.  As  the  outer 
world  surrounds  us  with  its  unnumbered  influ- 
ences, so  imagination  fills  our  inner  being  with 
its  boundless  wealth.  Hence  how  can  its  activity 
fail  to  be  decisive  for  health  or  illness?    "Many 


124  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

an  hour,"  says  Lichtenberg,*  "have  I  spent  in 
giving  full  rein  to  my  fancy,  and  I  should  never 
have  reached  the  age  I  did  had  I  not  steeped 
myself  in  that  bath  of  imagination  at  the  season 
when  people  usually  go  to  watering-places." 

Our  sentiments  are  at  work  while  we  give 
scope  to  our  imagination,  and  here  lies  the 
opportunity  of  the  observant  physician.  We 
have  all  heard  stories  of  the  miraculous  cura- 
tive power  of  the  imagination  in  disease,  and  we 
are  only  too  familiar  with  the  part  imagination 
plays  in  bringing  on  disease  or  aggravating  it 
where  it  exists;  may  we  not  then  assume  that 
what  can  cause  and  cure  disease,  can  also  pre- 
vent it?  How  great  and  serious  is  the  suffering 
of  those  unfortunate  beings  who  in  their  fixed 
imagination  surrender  themselves  to  a  threat- 
ened or  existing  evil !  Sooner  or  later  what  they 
fear  overtakes  them.  The  physiological  cause 
of  this  phenomenon  lies  in  the  constant  nervous 
excitation  of  the  organ  concerned,  with  its  direct 
sequels.  There  is  on  record  the  case  of  a  pupil 
of  Boerhave,  who  went  through  the  most  terri- 

*  Georg  Christoph  Lichtenberg  (1742-99),  a  German  physicist, 
critic,  and  satirist,  known  for  his  discoveries  in  the  field  of  elec- 
tricity. 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE   SOUL  12^ 

ble  experiences  in  the  course  of  his  medical 
studies,  because  all  the  morbid  conditions  which 
the  eloquent  teacher  so  vividly  depicted  grad- 
ually made  their  appearance  in  his  own  body. 
After  having  suffered  from  various  fevers  and 
inflammatory  diseases  during  his  winter  course, 
and  from  nervous  affections  during  the  summer, 
he  thought  it  advisable  to  give  up  a  profession 
which  had  brought  him  to  the  brink  of  the 
grave.  The  imaginary  cases  of  hydrophobia 
and  cholera,  at  a  time  when  the  popular  mind  is 
filled  with  anxiety  on  these  subjects,  are  further 
illustrations  of  the  same  phenomenon.  While 
Studying  ophthalmology,  says  Feuchtersleben, 
the  future  oculist  sometimes  sees  mouclies  volan- 
tes  (floating  black  specks)  before  his  eyes, 
which  may  thereby  become  actually  weakened, 
and  his  imagination  may  even  conjure  up  the 
spectre  of  a  cataract. 

If  we  turn  to  the  comforting  consideration  of 
the  many  cases  where  an  actual  cure  is  brought 
about  by  a  purely  imaginary  agency — have  we 
not  all  heard  of  bread  pills  and  their  marvellous 
effect? — we  must  ask  ourselves,  Is  the  cure  less 
real  because  due  to   imagination?     Feuchters- 


126  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

leben  cites  an  amusing  case  in  point.  An  Eng- 
lish physician,  who  had  been  vainly  treating  a 
man  suffering  from  temporary  paralysis  of  the 
tongue,  thought  he  would  try  in  his  case  an 
instrument,  invented  by  himself,  on  whose  effi- 
cacy he  built  high  hopes.  In  order  to  ascertain 
first  the  temperature  of  the  tongue,  he  inserted 
under  it  a  small  pocket  thermometer.  The 
patient,  believing  that  this  was  the  new  instru- 
ment which  was  to  cure  him,  assured  the  doctor 
after  a  few  minutes,  with  every  manifestation  of 
delight,  that  he  could  now  move  his  tongue,  and 
proceeded  to  do  so.  Was  he,  asks  Feuchters- 
leben,  less  able  to  move  the  tongue  because  it 
was  only  his  imagination  that  had  cured  him? 

The  candid  observer  of  his  own  self  must 
admit  that  he  is  most  strongly  influenced  by  the 
vital  energy  of  a  single  individual,  which  leaves 
its  stamp  upon  him.  The  courage  of  the  hero 
reanimates  like  a  divine  breath  his  terror- 
stricken  comrades,  after  trembling  fear  has 
spread  its  contagion.  The  hearty  laugh,  the 
merry  mood,  irresistibly  infect  the  assembled 
company,  and  even  the  surly  misanthrope,  fight 
against  it  as  he  may,  cannot  wholly  suppress  the 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  127 

smile  that  steals  over  his  lips.  Again,  the  yawn 
of  a  single  bored  individual  creates  an  epidemic 
of  yawns.  What  one  person  in  a  crowd  professes 
to  have  seen,  all  see,  and  thus  it  is  possible  for 
a  number  of  sane  and  truthful  persons  to  testify 
that  they  have  seen  the  ghost  which  a  medium 
has  conjured  up.  In  an  evil  sense,  as  well  as  for 
every  good  purpose,  it  may  be  said  that  faith  is 
all-powerful,  and  that  the  age  of  miracles  is  not 
yet  past.  Think  well  of  your  fellowman,  and 
you  will  find  him  vv^orthy  of  your  trust;  confide 
in  him  who  is  half  honest,  and  he  will  become 
wholly  so;  give  your  pupil  credit  for  ability, 
and  he  will  manifest  it;  consider  him  incapable 
of  progress,  and  he  will  remain  so.  Believe  that 
you  are  healthy,  and  you  may  become  sound. 
All  nature  is  but  an  echo  of  the  spirit,  and  the 
highest  law  which  she  discloses  to  us  is  that  the 
ideal  may  become  the  real,  and  that  ideas  grad- 
ually conquer  the  world. 

Imagination,  we  see,  is  thus  the  propelling 
force  in  the  realm  of  thought,  and  it  behooves 
the  wise  physician  to  avail  himself  of  this  fact 
in  all  those  cases  where  the  innate  stock  of 
imagination  is  too  slender  to  enable  the  patient 


128  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

to  follow  out,  of  his  own  initiative,  the  plans 
essential  for  the  hygiene  of  the  soul.  In  other 
words,  the  physician  will  stimulate  the  feeble 
will  of  his  patient  by  imposing  upon  it  his  own. 
"Soulsick,"  says  Hippel,*  "is  everyone  whose 
imagination  is  weak."  Hufeland  was  right  in 
considering  an  imagination  busy  with  lovely 
things  among  the  most  important  means  of  pro- 
longing life.  "Kalobiotik"  (the  art  of  making 
life  beautiful)  is  thus  a  part  of  his  famous 
"Makrobiotik"  (the  art  of  prolonging  life). 
Imagination  alone  can  render  life  beautiful. 
The  sad  catastrophes  which  wrecked  gifted  writ- 
ers like  Novalist  and  KleistJ  could  not  have 
occurred  if  their  imagination  had  not  taken  a 
wrong  direction,  and  led  to  the  paralysis  of  all 
capacity  for  enjoyment.  The  power  of  the 
imagination,  as  it  may  be  the  most  beneficial, 
can  also  become  the  most  dangerous  element  of 
our  emotional  nature.  It  is  a  gentle  Vestal 
flame  which,   if  guarded  in   its  virgin  purity, 

*  Theodor  Gottlieb  von  Hippel    (1741-96),  a   German   satirist. 

t  "Novalis,"  the  assumed  name  of  Friedrich  von  Hardenberg 
(1772-1801),  a  writer  of  the  romantic  school,  whose  troubled 
life  came  to  an  early  close. 

JHeinrich  von  Kleist  (1777-1811),  the  dramatist,  who  killed 
himself  and  the  woman  he  loved. 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  129 

gives    light    and    life,    but   which,    freed    from 
restraint,  leaves  desolation  in  its  path. 

It  has  been  vouchsafed  to  man  to  nourish  as 
well  as  subdue  the  fire  of  imagination  within 
him  by  that  glorious  ingredient  of  human  cul- 
ture— wit  and  humor.  How  wholesome  is  the 
power  of  wit  in  ridiculing  vanity,  pedantry, 
irresolution,  and  dejection!  It  dispels  gnawing 
care,  disarms  puffed-up  pride,  and  chases  away 
torturing  delusion.  The  momentary  cheerful- 
ness to  which  even  the  gloomiest  mind  yields 
while  under  the  spell  of  pleasant  diversion  is  of 
priceless  value  in  cases  where  no  other  distrac- 
tion is  of  avail.  And  as  the  treasures  of  litera- 
ture ofifer  their  cheering  balm,  so  the  entire  field 
of  art  holds  out  its  sweet  consolation.  As  in  our 
dreams  the  fatiguing  struggle  between  the  intel- 
lect and  the  world  of  reality  gives  way  to  a  state 
of  gentle  passiveness  which  replenishes  the  pow- 
ers of  body  and  soul,  so  art  creates  waking 
dreams  which  sustain  our  dual  nature  under  its 
most  staggering  burdens.  Music,  the  creative 
arts,  and  persuasive  speech  appeal  to  the  body 
as  they  do  to  the  mind.  Of  music  in  particular 
a  keen  observer  has  said  that  its  most  important 


I30  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

effect  is  to  promote  health.  For  health  consists 
in  the  full  control  of  all  bodily  and  mental  func- 
tions, and  song  and  music  reanimate  our  organs, 
and  cause  the  entire  nervous  system  to  vibrate  in 
harmonious  accord.  Thus  every  form  of  art 
rests  on  the  sense  of  harmonious  relations,  and 
all  the  arts  may  become  the  very  basis  of  health 
and  cheerfulness,  if,  dominated  and  guided  by 
the  intellect,  they  lead  us  to  peace  and  content- 
ment. But  it  is  only  art  in  its  ennobling  forms 
that  can  fulfil  these  functions.  The  question 
whether  the  works  of  our  modern  painters  and 
sculptors  can  inspire  us  as  do  the  treasures  of 
antiquity,  and  whether  our  poets  can  cheer  us 
as  the  immortal  ones  do,  has  a  far  greater  bear- 
ing on  the  hygiene  of  the  soul  than  is  commonly 
supposed. 

In  speaking  of  the  will  as  the  motive  power 
of  the  imagination,  Feuchtersleben  has  in  mind 
not  the  determination  to  attain  one's  desire, 
whether  of  a  higher  or  a  lower  kind,  but  that 
assertion  of  individual  energy  which  is  the 
crowning  faculty  of  the  soul  and,  in  the  last 
analysis,  expresses  character.  Toward  the 
strengthening  of  will  power  the  moralist,  law- 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  131 

giver  and  teacher,  as  well  as  the  physician,  must 
direct  their  efforts  if  reason  is  to  exercise  that 
sway  on  which  moral  and  physical  health 
depends.  The  task  of  the  physician  is  often 
almost  completed  if  he  succeeds  in  arousing  the 
will  of  his  patient.  It  is  idle  to  attempt  to 
reason  with  the  insane,  to  try  to  show  him  that 
his  delusion  is  a  phantom,  but  he  can  be  cured 
if  we  succeed  in  stimulating  his  activity,  in  get- 
ting him  to  the  point  of  exercising  his  will 
power.  And  how  much  more  certain  will  be  the 
result  in  the  case  of  one  who  is  merely  feeble  in 
body  and  soul,  and  learns  that  there  is  a  remedy 
within  him  which  he  can  apply  as  soon  as  he 
wills. 

The  conditions  of  modern  society  are  often 
such  as  to  militate  against  the  free  exercise  of 
the  will,  and  we  are  only  too  prone  to  excuse 
our  lack  of  resolution  on  the  score  of  absent- 
mindedness,  inability  to  come  to  a  decision, 
momentary  distraction — ominous  names  all  of 
these,  says  Feuchtersleben,  and  fatal  to  the 
hygiene  of  the  soul.  Nothing  leads  so  easily  to 
final  paralysis  of  will  power  as  the  habit  of 
indecision.     Even  physical  collapse  may  be  its 


132  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

ultimate  consequence.  He  relates  a  striking 
case  in  point,  on  the  authority  of  Marcus  Herz, 
a  Berlin  physician,  famous  in  the  last  decades  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  The  doctor  was  treat- 
ing the  writer  Moritz,*  who  was  to  all  appear- 
ances in  the  last  stages  of  a  consuming  fever. 
The  hope  which  he  felt  bound  to  hold  out  to  his 
patient  seemed  but  to  aggravate  his  condition. 
He  met  the  physician's  statements  with  expres- 
sions of  utter  despondency,  and  the  struggle 
between  hope  and  fear  sapped  the  sufferer's  last 
strength.  Herz,  knowing  the  character  of  his 
patient,  decided  upon  a  desperate  step.  He  told 
him  that  all  hope  was  indeed  gone.  The  intense 
excitement  into  which  the  sufferer  was  thrown 
by  this  announcement  was  followed  by  listless 
apathy.  In  the  evening  the  pulse  had  improved, 
and  a  quieter  night  followed.  The  fever  dimin- 
ished day  by  day,  and  within  three  weeks  the 
patient  was  well. 

Absentmindedness  or  want  of  concentration, 
so  closely  related  to  lack  of  will  power,  may  be 
said   to  correspond   to   that  physical   condition 

*  K.  P.  Moritz   (1756-93),  a  writer  on  esthetics,  prominent  in 
the  "storm  and  stress"  period  of  German  literature. 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  133 

known  as  trembling  of  the  muscles.  It  is  a  state 
of  psychical  oscillation  expressive  of  the  ina- 
bility of  the  spirit  to  pursue  a  certain  aim,  and 
of  a  desire  for  constant  relaxation  and  change. 
And  just  as  bodily  weakness  finally  yields  to 
vigorous  impulse,  so  the  will  works  wonders  in 
overcoming  the  trembling  of  the  soul.  Feuch- 
tersleben  found  in  his  own  person  that  a  ner- 
vous condition  in  which  the  printed  letters 
seemed  to  dance  before  his  eyes  disappeared  as 
soon  as  he  fastened  his  gaze  steadily  upon  the 
apparently  trembling  objects.  Exactly  so  can  the 
will  overcome  the  oscillations  of  the  soul.  To 
diversion  he  opposes  concentration.  He  con- 
demns the  popular  expedient  of  resorting  to  dis- 
tracting pastimes  as  a  panacea  for  physical  and 
mental  ailments.  The  contrary,  that  is  to  say, 
the  fixing  of  the  will  upon  a  certain  activity  pro- 
ceeding from  within,  is  the  proper  remedy  in 
such  cases.  Feuchtersleben  is  here  in  close 
accord  with  Pascal,  who  says: 

"The  only  thing  which  makes  us  forget  our 
miseries  is  distraction,  yet  this  in  reality  is  the 
greatest  of  all  miseries;  for  it  is  precisely  dis- 
traction that  keeps  us  from  thinking  seriously 


134  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

about  ourselves  and  insensibly  destroys  us. 
Without  it  we  should  become  weary,  and  weari- 
ness would  force  us  to  seek  a  better  way  out  of 
our  troubles.  Distraction  merely  beguiles  us 
and  gradually  leads  to  death." 

Grillparzer,  who  in  his  own  person  learned 
to  know  the  torments  of  indecision,  has  in  a 
striking  passage  given  poetic  utterance  to 
Feuchtersleben's  remarks  as  to  the  value  of  con- 
centration: 

"Concentered  thought?     Spoke  thus  mere  accident? 
Or  dids't  thou  fully  grasp  its  meaning,  child? 
The  word  thou  utter'st  balm  is  to  my  ear, 
For  thou  has  named  the  world's  prodigious  lever. 
Which  raises  what  is  great  a  thousand  fold. 
And  moves  the  smallest  closer  to  the  stars. 
The  hero's  deed,  the  poet's  holy  song, 
The  seer's  vision,  and  the  hand  of  God, 
Attention  rapt  conceives  or  comprehends. 
Distraction  idly  mocks  what  ne'er  it  grasps." 

"Lack  of  initiative,"  "poor  spirits,"  "ill- 
humor,"  or  by  whatever  name  society  may 
dignify  insufficient  self-control— all  are  repre- 
hensible alike  in  the  eyes  of  the  philosopher 
and  the  physician.  Lavater  wrote  on  the  moral 
aspects  of  ill-humor,  Feuchtersleben  condemns 
it  from  a  purely  medical  point  of  view.     Sad- 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  135 

ness,  he  says,  is  a  condition  which  no  one  can 
always  successfully  contend,  but  moroseness  is 
quite  a  different  thing.  There  may  be  a  certain 
poetic  element  in  sadness,  but  moodiness  and 
moroseness  lack  every  element  of  attraction. 
They  and  all  their  kin  have  their  root  in  habit- 
ual indolence,  and  the  remedy  lies  in  a  continu- 
ous and  wise  activity — serious  in  the  hours  of 
work,  diverting  in  leisure  moments.  Were  we 
not  in  the  habit  of  passing  the  finest  morning 
hours  in  bed,  we  should  never  know  that  depres- 
sing consciousness  of  being  late  with  which  we 
so  often  begin  the  day.  Had  we  from  early 
childhood  accustomed  ourselves  to  a  pleasant 
orderliness,  our  inner  being  would  have  acquired 
a  harmony  in  consonance  with  our  outward 
actions.  If  every  moment  were  used  in  accord- 
ance with  the  fitness  of  things,  there  would  be 
no  time  for  being  "out  of  sorts."*  It  is  true  we 
cannot  always  be  in  the  right  humor  for  every- 
thing, but  we  can  always  be  in  the  right  humor 
for  some  things.    A  wise  recognition  of  the  value 

*  "The  calm  or  disturbance  of  our  mind  does  not  depend  so 
much  on  what  we  regard  as  the  more  important  things  of  Hfe 
as  on  a  judicious  or  injudicious  arrangement  of  the  little  things 
of  daily  occurrence." — La  Rochefoucauld:  Ma.v'uiis. 


136  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

of  change  of  occupation  does  wonders  in  keep- 
ing off  the  'Vapors."  Withdrawal  from  'the 
world  engenders  moroseness  and,  according  to 
Plato,  promotes  obstinacy.  But  so  does  constant 
living  with  and  in  the  world;  therefore  let  us 
learn  to  live  both  with  and  without  the  world, 
and  we  shall  find  in  suitable  change  health  and 
good  spirits. 

All  the  various  conditions  due  to  ill-regulated 
nerves  may  be  overcome  by  will  power,  just  as 
certain  morbid  conditions  may  be  brought  on 
by  the  absence  of  that  power.  In  the  human 
organism  slumber  unsuspected  forces,  which 
may  be  awakened  by  the  firm  will.  The  stoi- 
cism of  the  ancients — the  purest,  loftiest,  and 
most  practical  of  all  pre-Christian  doctrines — 
has  proved  to  the  world  what  may  be  accom- 
plished by  will  power.  Let  no  one  imagine  that 
the  disciples  of  the  stoic  schools  were  steeled  by 
cold  syllogisms;  it  was  the  power  of  the  will 
that  wrought  their  miracles  of  endurance. 

There  is  perhaps  no  more  remarkable  phe- 
nomenon  in   the   develooment  of  man's   nature 

1 

than  the  influence  of  abstract  thought  on  his 
concrete  organism  through  that  connecting  link 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  137 

which  may  be  termed  "intellectual  emotion." 
In  the  existence  of  such  emotion,  side  by  side 
with  the  ethico-religious  sentiment,  lies  the  root 
of  all  humanitarianism.  Individuals  of  a  lower 
order  do  not  think  in  connection  with  what  they 
feel;  persons  in  whom  the  intellect  unduly  pre- 
dominates think  without  reference  to  emotion; 
only  those  who  have  attained  a  high  degree  of 
both  intellectual  and  moral  culture  think  and 
feel  as  man  ought  to.  But  everything  depends 
on  what  we  mean  by  "culture."  The  sickly 
scholar  and  the  robust  ignorant  peasant  repre- 
sent alike  human  types  in  the  composition  of 
which  important  elements  of  culture  are  want- 
ing, even  though  the  scholar  may  have  neglected 
his  body  because  of  his  deep  interest  in  mathe- 
matical problems,  and  the  peasant  may  know 
enough  to  be  a  good  citizen.  True  culture  con- 
sists in  the  harmonious  development  of  all  our 
faculties,  and  in  it  alone  lie  health,  happiness, 
and  wisdom. 

The  principal  reason  for  a  chronic,  ill-defined 
state  of  invalidism  must  often  be  sought  in  an 
exaggerated  attention  to  the  concerns  of  the 
body,  and  no  surer  way  of  counteracting  this 


138  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

evil  can  be  found  than  by  turning  the  attention 
toward  higher  intellectual  and  spiritual  aims. 
Nothing  is  more  pitiful  than  to  observe  a  petty 
mind  eternally  busy  w^ith  the  care  of  its  material 
welfare,  which  this  very  care  is  undermining  day 
by  day.  Patients  recruited  from  this  class,  who 
are  despised  by  their  own  physicians,  die  from 
sheer  longing  to  live.  And  why?  Because  they 
lack  spiritual  and  intellectual  culture,  which 
alone  could  have  given  them  mastery  over  their 
miserable  physical  state. 

Greater  even  than  those  wonderful  disciples 
of  stoicism  who  owe  their  spiritual  triumphs 
to  force  of  will,  are  those  lofty  and  serene  minds 
the  range  of  whose  interests  embraces  every 
form  of  sane  enjoyment  open  to  man.  Of  such 
was  preeminently  Goethe.  Spinoza,  often  con- 
sidered the  most  austere  of  philosophers,  said: 
"It  is  impossible  to  overdo  gaiety  of  spirits,  for 
every  sort  of  gaiety  is  of  value;  sadness,  how- 
ever, is  ever  an  evil."  And  he  also  said:  "The 
more  we  cultivate  our  intelligence,  the  happier 
we  become." 

It  is  interesting  to  find  Schopenhauer  turning 
from  the  darker  aspects  of  life  and  coinciding 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  139 

with  Feuchtersleben's  view  of  the  philosophic 
value  of  serenity.  "Nothing,"  he  says,  "con- 
duces so  directly  to  happiness  as  cheerfulness. 
It  is  a  quality  which  is  its  own  immediate 
reward.  He  who  is  gay  has  always  a  reason  for 
being  so,  namely,  the  fact  that  he  is  gay.  Cheer- 
fulness alone  can  make  up  for  the  loss  of  every 
other  possession,  while  nothing  can  take  its 
place.  We  may  be  young,  handsome,  rich,  and 
high  in  station;  still,  in  estimating  our  happi- 
ness, the  question  will  be  asked :  Are  w'e  cheer- 
ful with  it  all?  But  if  we  see  a  person  who  is 
cheerful,  no  matter  whether  he  be  young,  or 
old,  straight  of  limb  or  deformed,  poor  or  rich, 
he  is  happy.  Therefore  let  us  open  wide  the 
door  to  cheerfulness  whenever  it  knocks.  It  can' 
never  come  amiss.  Instead  of  thinking  thus, 
however,  we  often  hesitate  whether  to  admit  it 
at  all,  and  begin  to  reflect  whether  we  really 
have  every  cause  for  contentment,  or  fear  that 
gaiety  will  disturb  our  serious  thoughts  and 
anxious  problems.  But  what  good  these  will  do 
is  very  uncertain,  while  cheerfulness  is  a  direct 
gain." 

If  thus  mere  thoughtless  gaiety,  the  uncon- 


I40  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

scious  expression  of  a  natural  elasticity  of 
spirits,  can  become  a  salutary  and  sustaining 
force,  how  much  more  powerful  will  be  the 
stimulus  of  the  conscious  feeling  that  we  have 
made  the  most  of  our  endowments  and  oppor- 
tunities and  live  our  lives  sanely,  as  complete 
parts  of  a  harmonious  whole. 

If  we  observe  the  hypochondriac  closely  and 
with  an  unprejudiced  eye,  we  shall  find  that  his 
condition  consists  at  bottom  of  a  dull,  sad  ego- 
tism. He  lives,  thinks  and  suffers  only  for  his 
pitiful  little  self.  He  turns  away  from  every- 
thing that  is  beautiful  in  nature  and  man  and — 
what  is  worse — from  the  sufferings  of  his  fel- 
low-men, and  so  far  from  taking  that  philosophi- 
cal view  to  which  nothing  human  is  foreign, 
becomes  a  stranger  to  everything  human.  If  it 
be  important  to  act  upon  such  a  mind  before  it 
sinks  into  final  darkness,  hovv^  much  more  impor- 
tant is  it  to  counteract  in  time  that  tendency 
toward  gloomy  dissatisfaction  which  lurks  in 
so  many  of  us.  Self-control,  which  is  nothing 
else  than  a  wise  moderation,  is  the  lever  which 
lifts  the  mind  into  willing  obedience  to  law — 
the  source  of  all  real  contentment. 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  141 

Nothing  conduces  to  inward  serenity  so  much 
as  the  contemplation  of  the  eternal  works  of 
nature.  The  Brahmin,  oblivious  of  his  self  in 
his  devotion  to  the  problems  of  the  universe, 
passes  his  days  in  frugal  contentment,  and 
attains  a  span  of  life  vouchsafed  to  few  of  his 
restless  fellow  men  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 
Kant,  to  whom  nature  had  given  a  frail  body, 
wrested  from  her  permanent  health  by  thinking 
great  thoughts.  Wieland,*  than  whom  few 
have  lived  a  more  harmonious  life,  has  shown 
that  the  vivid  imagination  of  the  poet  may 
accompany  the  uniform  development  of  all  the 
other  intellectual  powers,  and  lead  to  the  hap- 
piest and  healthiest  old  age.  Nothing  is  more 
salutary  than  to  regard  those  luminous  minds 
that  triumphed  over  advancing  years.  Plato 
studied  and  taught  till  nearly  eighty;  Sopho- 
cles wrote  his  Oedipus  at  Colonus  when  still 
older;  Cato  retained  his  active  interest  in  public 
affairs  till  his  death,  at  eighty-five;  Isocrates 
composed  brilliant  orations  at  the  age  of  ninety- 

*  Christoph  Martin  Wieland  (1733-1813),  one  of  the  most 
prominent  writers  of  the  classic  period  of  German  literature,  the 
friend  of  Goethe  and  Herder,  chiefly  known  for  his  romantic 
epic  Oberon. 


142  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

three;  Fleury,  at  ninety,  still  guided  the  desti- 
nies of  France,  and  Goethe's  vision  ranged 
undimmed  over  the  universe  until  death  closed 
his  eyes  in  his  eighty-third  year. 

Let  us  not  rashly  assume  that  the  spirit  of  the 
modern  age  is  opposed  to  the  harmonious 
development  of  body  and  mind,  that  diminished 
physical  power  is  a  necessary  concomitant  of  the 
universal  spread  of  intelligence.  Cultivation  of 
the  intellect  alone,  it  is  true,  is  not  culture;  but 
where  judicious  reading,  stimulating  conversa- 
tion, independent  thinking,  and  the  free  play  of 
the  imagination,  are  joined  to  a  firm  will,  the 
result  is  to-day,  as  of  yore,  sound  physical 
health.  Truly  cultured,  that  is  to  say,  sagacious 
and  clear-minded  persons,  are  far  less  prone  to 
complaining  about  physical  ailments  and  men- 
tal depression  than  those  whose  horizon  includes 
nothing  more  prominent  than  their  bodily  con- 
cerns. With  Brigham,*  Feuchtersleben  believes 
that  the  progress  of  that  civilization  in  which 

*  Amariah  Brigham  (1798-1849),  an  American  physician,  whose 
treatises  on  insanity  and  diseases  of  the  brain  were  authoritative 
in  their  day.  He  wrote :  Influence  of  Mental  Cultivation  on  the 
Health,  and  Influence  of  Religion  upon  the  Health  and  Physical 
Welfare  of  Mankind. 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  143 

the  cultivation  of  the  arts  goes  hand  in  hand 
with  moral  and  intellectual  enlightenment,  and 
in  which  rational  diversions  occupy  as  impor- 
tant a  place  as  sane  temperance  measures,  is  cer- 
tain to  lead  to  decreased  mortality  and  height- 
ened physical  welfare. 

It  is  our  duty  to  inform  our  intellect  if  we 
would  learn  to  subdue  our  passions.  The  more 
closely  we  conform  to  truth,  the  freer  we  are  to 
act,  and  activity  means  health.  He  who  cannot 
master  his  passions  and  emotions  spends  his  life 
in  servitude.  Tears  and  sighs  are  evidences  of  a 
weak  soul  and  obstacles  in  the  pursuit  of  virtue 
and  health.  The  mind  insensibly  conforms  to 
such  mechanical  expressions  of  inner  feebleness. 
Hence  the  importance  of  establishing  physical 
habits  to  aid  in  the  regeneration  of  faulty  men- 
tal traits — experiments  that  arc  within  the  power 
of  everyone.  Let  those  prone  to  act  with  pre- 
cipitation accustom  themselves  to  walk  and  write 
slowly.  The  irresolute  should  try  to  work 
rapidly;  those  who  walk  about  sad-eyed  and 
with  bowed  head,  lost  in  fanciful  day  dreams, 
should  be  taught  to  walk  erect,  look  others 
straight  in  the  face,  and  to  speak  in  a  loud  and 


144  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

distinct  voice.  If  we  attune  our  minds  to  joy  we 
shall  do  nature's  bidding.  She  has  implanted 
in  every  organic  being  the  conditions  of  self- 
preservation.  Pie  who  has  retained  his  individ- 
ual freedom  will  not  waste  time  in  thinking  of 
death.  Wisdom  lies  not  in  the  contemplation 
of  death,  but  in  that  of  life.  We  shall  live  a 
rational  life  if  we  keep  from  us  whatever  im- 
pedes our  action  and  prevents  our  enjoyment 
— hatred,  envy,  anger,  pride  and  arrogance. 
There  is  no  more  effective  way  of  conquering 
the  passions  and  emotions  than  by  learning  to 
know  their  causes.  All  experience  shows  this. 
Even  grief  yields  to  reason.  We  mourn  those 
we  have  loved  and  lost  less  when  we  reflect  upon 
the  laws  of  nature. 

Before  we  arrive  at  a  definite  knowledge  of 
the  nature  of  our  passions  we  must  establish  for 
ourselves  certain  principles,  and  imprint  them 
so  firmly  on  our  minds  that  we  may  apply  them 
in  any  emergency  that  may  arise.*  If,  for  in- 
stance, as  the  result  of  our  reflection  that  love 
is  the  source  of  universal  happiness,  we  have 

*  "When  the  need  of  each  opinion  comes,  we  ought  to  have  it 
in   readiness,"  says  Epictetus. 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  14c; 

adopted  the  dogma  that  love  can  conquer 
hatred,  the  wrong  done  us  by  some  enemy  will 
not  easily  excite  our  ire.*  In  thus  arranging,  as 
it  were,  our  thoughts  beforehand,  it  is,  however, 
essential  to  keep  before  us  the  good  inherent  in 
most  things,  so  that  we  may  ever  be  animated 
by  a  certain  feeling  of  pleasure  in  translating 
our  thoughts  into  action.  If,  for  instance,  we 
are  conscious  of  a  desire  for  fame,  let  us  think 
of  the  good  there  is  in  fame,  and  of  how  true 
fame  may  be  attained ;  but  let  us  not  dwell  on 
false  glory,  its  transitoriness,  and  on  whatever 
is  unpleasant  in  connection  with  the  subject  and 
may  give  rise  to  morbid  doubt.  The  ability  to 
acquire  habits  is  the  kindest  gift  of  Providence. 
Through  habit  are  we  enabled  to  assert  the  vigor 
of  our  individuality,  while  gradually  assimilat- 
ing what  at  first  was  foreign  to  us.  To  acquire 
good  habits,  bred  of  a  joyous  submission  to  the 
divinity,  is  the  essence  of  morality,  and  hence  of 
the  hygiene  of  the  soul. 

*  "Whenever  any  man  dotli  trespass  ag^ainst  thee,  presently 
consider  with  thyself  what  it  was  that  he  did  suppose  to  he 
good,  what  to  he  evil,  when  he  did  trespass.  For  this  when  thou 
knowest,  thou  wilt  pity  him ;  thou  wilt  have  no  occasion  either 
to  wonder,  or  to  be  angry." — Meditations  of  Marcus  Aitrcliiis 
(Casaubon's   translation). 


146  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

It  is  easy  to  trace  the  influence  of  the  ancients 
on  Feuchtersleben's  philosophy.  A  striking  pas- 
sage from  Epictetus  makes  this  influence  still 
clearer.  "It  is  impossible,"  says  he,  "for  habits 
and  faculties,  some  of  them  not  to  be  produced 
when  they  did  not  exist  before,  and  others  not 
to  be  increased  and  strengthened  by  correspond- 
ing acts.  In  this  manner  certainly,  as  philoso- 
phers say,  also  diseases  of  the  mind  grow  up. 
For  when  you  have  once  desired  money,  if  reason 
be  applied  to  lead  to  a  perception  of  the  evil, 
the  desire  is  stopped,  and  a  ruling  faculty  of  our 
mind  is  restored  to  the  original  authority.  But 
if  you  apply  no  means  of  cure,  it  no  longer 
returns  to  the  same  state,  but  being  again  excited 
by  the  corresponding  appearance,  it  is  inflamed 
to  desire  quicker  than  before,  and  when  this 
takes  place  continually  it  is  henceforth  hard- 
ened, and  the  disease  of  the  mind  confirms  the 
love  of  money.  For  he  who  has  had  a  fever, 
and  has  been  released  from  it,  is  not  in  the  same 
state  that  he  was  before,  unless  he  has  been  com- 
pletely cured.  Something  of  the  kind  happens 
also  in  diseases  of  the  soul.  Certain  traces  and 
blisters  are  left  in  it,  and  unless  a  man  shall  com- 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  1 47 

pletely  efface  them,  when  he  is  again  lashed  on 
the  same  places,  the  lash  will  produce  not  blis- 
ters, but  sores.  If  then  you  wish  not  to  be  of  an 
angry  temper,  do  not  feed  the  habit;  throw  noth- 
ing on  it  which  will  increase  it;  at  first  keep 
quiet,  and  count  the  days  on  which  you  have  not 
been  angry.  I  used  to  be  in  passion;  now  every 
second  day,  then  every  third,  then  every  fourth. 
But  if  you  have  intermitted  thirty  days,  make  a 
sacrifice  to  God.  For  the  habit  at  first  begins  to 
be  weakened,  and  then  completely  destroyed. 
.  .  .  Every  habit  and  faculty  is  maintained  and 
increased  by  the  corresponding  actions.  .  .  . 
When  you  have  been  angry,  you  must  know  that 
not  only  has  this  evil  befallen  you,  but  that  you 
have  also  increased  the  habit,  and  in  a  manner 
thrown  fuel  upon  fire.  .  .  .  Generally,  then,  if 
you  would  make  anything  a  habit,  do  it;  if  you 
would  not  make  it  a  habit,  do  not  do  it;  but 
accustom  yourself  to  do  something  else  in  place 
of  it."* 

Emerson,  in  his  essay  on  "Compensation," 
speaks  of  the  polarity,  or  action  and  reaction,  in 
every  part  of  nature,  of  the  dualism  that  under- 

*  George  Long's  translation. 


148  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

lies  the  condition  of  man.  "Every  excess,"  he 
says  in  a  famous  passage,  "causes  a  defect;  every 
defect  an  excess.  Every  sweet  hath  its  sour; 
.  every  evil  its  good.  Every  faculty  which  is  a 
receiver  of  pleasure  has  an  equal  penalty  put  on 
its  abuse.  It  is  to  answer  for  its  moderation  with 
its  life.  For  every  grain  of  wit  there  is  a  grain 
of  folly.  For  everything  you  have  missed,  you 
have  gained  something  else;  and  for  everything 
you  gain,  you  lose  something." 

Feuchtersleben  expresses  the  same  thought  as 
follows:  "The  life  of  man,  as  that  of  all  nature, 
consists  of  contrasts,  which  follow,  accompany, 
and  condition  each  other.  There  is  at  work  in 
the  universe  a  law  of  equilibrium  according  to 
which  these  contrasts  are  equalized  as  soon  as 
manifested.  ...  In  the  entire  realm  of  nature 
there  exists  no  advantage  without  a  defect,  no 
profit  without  a  loss,  no  ascent  without  a  fall, 
no  discord  without  harmony.  Thus,  too,  in  that 
microcosm,  the  life  of  man,  there  is  constant 
action  and  reaction:  sleeping  and  waking,  joy 
and  sorrow,  inspiration  and  expiration.  The 
stronger  the  impulse,  the  more  vigorous  the 
onset  of  the  opposite  conditioned  by  it."     If  the 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  1 49 

force  or  frequency  of  these  contrasts  is  increased, 
or  if  the  tendency  in  any  one  direction  becomes 
pronounced  and  permanent,  there  results  a  dis- 
turbance of  that  equilibrium  without  which  life 
cannot  exist.  It  is  then  all-important  to  know 
how  to  deal  with  these  contrasts.  Happy  is  he 
who,  when  old  age  creeps  upon  him,  can  revive 
youth  within  his  soul,  and  equally  happy  he  who 
in  the  struggle  between  youth  and  age,  can  con- 
serve his  remaining  strength  by  undisturbed  pla- 
cidity of  temper  and  emotion.  But  only  he  can 
attain  this  end  who  has  learned  to  control  him- 
self. It  does  not  suffice  to  exercise  care  in  the 
matter  of  food  and  drink,  to  regulate  the  hours  of 
work  and  rest,  to  know  by  heart  Hufeland's  Art 
of  Prolonging  Life;  it  is  necessary  to  force  one's 
self  to  acquire  moral  and  intellectual  strength, 
in  order  to  learn  the  meaning  of  true  health. 
And  the  art  of  self-control  is  beyond  no  one. 

Without  pain  there  would  be  no  pleasure,  just 
as  there  would  be  no  day  without  night.  Nature 
has  consciously  added  the  thorn  to  the  rose.  He 
who  would  free  us  from  all  sorrow  would  also 
deprive  us  of  all  pleasure;  care-free  persons, 
whose  every  wish  is  gratified,  and  v/ho  are  not 


I50  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

spurred  on  to  an  active  life,  easily  become  hypo- 
chondriacs.    Only  fools  will  envy  those  who, 
while  draining  every  source  of  pleasure,  feel  in 
the  depth  of  their  hearts  that  there  is  somehow 
a  gap  in  their  lives  which  no  enjoyment  can  fill. 
The  wise  man  will  not  invite  this  torturing  senti- 
ment, but  will  welcome  the  shadows  which  cross 
the  path  of  every  pilgrim  on  earth.    He  v/ill  find 
contentment  in  that  subdued  twilight  which  is 
alike  removed  from  the  glaring  day  of  happi- 
ness and  the  dark  night  of  misery.    The  longing 
for  a  better  and  more  perfect  world,  so  natural 
to  the  human  breast,  is  of  value  only  as  long  as 
it  remains  a  vague  dream.    Longings  and  aspira- 
tions   are   given    to   man    in    order   to   lift   his 
thoughts  to  a  higher  sphere,  but  not  to  bring 
that  realm  down  to  earthly  cognizance.     It  is 
our  duty  not  to  abandon  ourselves  to  religious 
yearnings;  abuse  of  devotional  sentiment  ends 
in  dissatisfaction  with  the  world  in  which  we 
live.     It  is  a  wise  institution  to  have  but  one 
Sunday  a  week.    The  desire  for  perfectibility  is 
far  more  likely  to  be  gratified  by  one  who  in 
resigned  contentment  takes  the  world  as  it  is  than 
by  him  who  constantly  longs  for  a  more  perfect 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  151 

one.  Let  us  not  ransack  heaven  and  earth  for 
sources  of  enjoyment.  Permanent  satisfaction 
can  be  secured  only  in  one  way:  by  devotion  to 
duty  and  by  work.  And  man's  activity  is  entirely 
compatible  with,  nay,  is  conditioned  on,  an  inner 
restful  serenity,  and  to  this,  if  we  choose,  we 
may  all  surrender  ourselves.  A  state  of  half 
voluntary,  half  unconscious  contentment  is  that 
which  is  most  conducive  to  health.  When  we 
are  both  busy  and  cheerful,  attentive  to  the 
world  and  in  accord  with  it,  we  are  not  likely  to 
fall  into  fitful  moods.  Such  a  state  of  content- 
ment represents  the  ripest  result  of  culture. 

Hypochondria,  the  opposite  of  this  serenity 
of  the  soul,  is  the  saddest  and  most  senseless  of 
all  human  afflictions.  Reason,  morality,  re- 
ligion, satire,  have  in  vain  exhausted  their 
armories  in  attacking  it;  it  survives,  unmoved 
even  by  the  reproach  that  it  is  in  reality  the 
result  of  sheer  selfishness.  It  has  become  fash- 
ionable to  look  upon  egotism  as  proof  of  a  supe- 
rior intellect.  Perhaps  the  best  way  of  dealing 
with  hypochondria  is  to  shov'/  that  it  is  a  phan- 
tom of  the  imagination,  a  mere  nothing. 

There  is,  it  is  true,  a  form  of  hypochondria 


1^2  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

which  can  be  treated  only  by  the  physician,  but 
what  is  commonly  understood  by  that  term  is  a 
purely  imaginary  evil,  and  deserves  a  harsher 
name.  There  would  seem  to  be  no  need  of  con- 
juring up  imaginary  ailments,  since  there  are 
enough  real  ones.  All  of  us  are  only  relatively 
well.  Every  one,  if  he  chooses,  and  has  eyes  to 
see,  may  discover  the  road  that  will  lead  him  to 
his  grave,  and  if  he  looks  about  him,  with  eyes 
dimmed  by  an  obscure  half-knowledge  of  the 
world,  he  will  discover  the  road  all  the  more 
readily — and  follow  it  at  an  accelerated  pace. 
As  long  as  we  are  well  enough  to  do  each  day 
what  the  day  calls  for,  and  can  enjoy  our  rest 
after  the  day's  work  is  done,  it  is  our  duty — 
alike  from  the  standpoint  of  the  citizen  and  that 
of  the  physician — to  pay  no  attention  to  our 
bodily  condition.  Pain  is  an  arrogant  nothing 
which  becomes  something  only  when  we  ac- 
knowledge its  existence.  We  ought  to  be 
ashamed  to  fondle  and  nourish  it  until  it  over- 
masters us.  It  becomes  great  only  because  we 
are  small.  Who  can  think  of  a  Themistocles  or 
a  Regulus  looking  at  his  tongue  in  a  mirror  or 
feeling  his  pulse!    Let  us  invoke  the  root  of  the 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  153 

evil,  that  it  may  cure  what  it  causes.  Does  not 
the  hypochondriac  die  daily  from  fear  of  death? 
Nothing  is  more  pathetically  ludicrous  than  to 
see  these  petty  unfortunates  who  ransack  medi- 
cal books  in  order  to  copy  prescriptions  and  rules 
for  the  preservation  of  health.  To  one  of  these 
Dr.  Herz  once  said:  "My  dear  fellow,  you  will 
some  day  die  of  a  misprint."  Such  hypochon- 
driacs are  the  human  failures  whom  Plato  would 
banish  from  the  state.  They  are  as  old  as  civil- 
ization. 

Kant  explained  away  as  a  mere  nothing  the 
hypochondria  v/hich  threatened  to  assail  his  own 
clearness  of  intellect,  and  pronounced  those  as 
lacking  in  sense  who  believed  in  the  reality  of 
such  an  evil.  "If  anyone,"  he  says,  "becomes  a 
prey  to  gloomy  moods,  let  him  ask  himself 
whether  there  is  any  cause  for  them.  If  he  finds 
no  cause,  or  recognizes  that,  while  there  exists 
a  reason  for  his  anxieties,  nothing  can  be  done 
to  remove  the  effect,  he  will  quietly  content  him- 
self with  this  expression  of  his  inner  feeling,  let 
his  anxieties  stay  where  they  are,  as  though  they 
did  not  concern  him  in  the  least,  and  go  about 
the  business  which  claims  his  attention." 


154  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

A  sound  resolve,  in  truth,  says  Feuchtersleben, 
and  one  which  worked  well,  for  by  brushing 
aside  the  nothing — which  in  his  case  really 
meant  a  narrow  chest  that  did  not  afford  suffi- 
cient space  to  his  lungs — the  sage  of  Konigsberg 
managed  to  attain  a  respectable  old  age.*  The 
philosopher  Lichtenberg  thought  of  his  own 
whimsies  and  moods  very  much  as  Kant  did. 
''There  are,"  he  says,  "serious  illnesses  of  which 
one  can  die,  and  there  are  others  of  which  one 
does  not  die,  but  which  one  can  recognize  and 
feel  without  much  effort,  and  finally  there  are 

*  Kant's  own  words  are :  "Owing  to  my  flat  and  narrow  chest, 
which  did  not  afford  sufficient  scope  to  the  movements  of  the 
heart  and  lungs,  I  had  a  natural  inclination  toward  hypochondria, 
which  in  earlier  years  bordered  on  disgust  with  life.  But  by 
reflecting  that  the  causes  of  this  difficulty  in  breathing  were 
perhaps  merely  mechanical,  and  therefore  irremediable,  I  suc- 
ceeded in  ignoring  it  completely.  Thus,  while  my  chest  felt 
oppressed,  there  was  peace  and  serenity  in  my  head,  and  this 
state  of  my  mind  expressed  itself  when  I  was  with  others  quite 
naturally  and  intentionall}^  and  not  (as  in  the  case  of  hypochon- 
driacs) according  to  varying  moods.  And  since  one  enjoys  life 
more  by  doing,  to  the  full  extent  of  one's  opportunities,  than  by 
giving  one's  self  up  to  pleasure,  mental  activity,  which  engenders 
a  sort  of  heightened  consciousness  of  life,  can  overcome  obstacles 
that  concern  the  body  alone.  The  oppression  of  the  chest  has 
remained  with  me,  for  its  cause  lies  in  my  bodily  constitution ; 
but  I  have  conquered  its  influence  on  my  thoughts  and  actions, 
by  turning  my  attention  away  from  my  physical  sensations,  as 
though  they  did  not  concern  me  in  the  least." — Vo)i  dcr  Macht 
dcs  Gcinulhs,  etc. 


THE   HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  1 55 

those  which  one  cannot  see  without  a  micro- 
scope. But  seen  through  the  microscope  they 
look  horrible.  The  name  of  that  microscope  is 
hypochondria." 

A  hypochondriacal  delusion  very  common  in 
former  days  was  the  belief  of  delicate  persons 
that  they  were  doomed  to  die  of  consumption — 
a  belief  fostered  by  sentimental  novels,  with  their 
hectic  heroes  and  heroines.  More  than  a  cen- 
tury ago  the  German  physician  Weikard  spoke 
of  a  certain  species  of  mental  aberration  as 
"imaginary  consumption."  Hippel  suggested 
as  a  remedy  for  the  imaginary  ailments  of  the 
hypochondriac  inoculation  with  a  real  disease. 
"Let  the  patient  get  sick,  so  that  he  may  know 
what  sickness  is,  and  he  will  get  well."  In 
whatever  light  we  may  consider  the  wretched 
plight  of  the  hypochondriac,  says  Feuchters- 
leben— whether  we  call  it  weakness,  delusion, 
laziness,  stupidity,  selfishness,  disease,  or  incipi- 
ent insanity — activity  is  the  only  cure  for  it,  and 
it  is  a  cure  that  ought  to  be  recommended  with 
very  little  ceremony.  Those  whose  ailments  are 
purely  imaginary  neither  excite  nor  deserve 
pity,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  they  should  not 


1^6  INTERNATIONAL   MINDS 

be  plainly  told  that  they  are  intolerable  and  unfit 
for  human  society.  Heroic  treatment  like  this 
may  sometimes  end  the  matter  much  more 
quickly  than  all  fine-spun  philosophical  argu- 
ments. We  have  the  moral  right  to  plague  those 
that  plague  us,  and  we  are,  moreover,  rude  only 
for  the  good  of  the  patient. 

Besides  selfishness  and  indolence,  habits  of 
pedantry  are  among  the  chief  causes  of  hypo- 
chondria. Such  habits  are  often  misinterpreted, 
being  overlooked  where  they  may  be  found  in 
full  flower,  or  wrongly  attributed  to  individuals 
who  are  quite  free  from  them.  Pedantry  in  this 
sense  does  not  consist  in  exaggerated  devotion  to 
minute  matters  of  orderliness  and  punctuality, 
but  in  that  littleness  of  mind  which  loses  sight 
of  the  end  while  reaching  out  for  the  means,  and 
makes  of  us  slaves  to  self-created  or  conventional 
idols.  The  true  pedant  is  not  the  secluded 
scholar  who  shuns  society  because  he  prefers  to 
it  the  companionship  of  his  books,  but  he  who 
prizes  the  conventionalities  of  literature  more 
than  the  world  of  thought,  of  which  the  book  is 
merely  the  symbol.  Such  a  pedant  is  he  to 
whom   a   particular  edition   of  Aristotle   is   of 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  157 

greater  importance  than  his  teachings,  and  who 
venerates  not  the  spirit  of  antiquity,  but  the 
mere  records  of  the  past  because  it  is  the  past. 
The  most  absurd  of  all  the  varieties  of  the 
pedant  is  he  who  least  of  all  dreams  that  he  can 
be  reckoned  among  such — the  drawing-room 
fop,  whose  life-breath  is  fashion  and  all  the 
petty  formalities  which,  from  having  been  the 
means  of  facilitating  agreeable  social  inter- 
course, have  been  elevated  by  ignorant  custom 
into  the  chief  aim  and  end  of  existence.  To  such 
an  one  the  trifles  of  life  have  become  the  reality 
and  realities  mere  trifles. 

Let  us  turn  to  the  melancholy  of  great  men, 
which  has  so  often  been  commented  upon. 
Aristotle's  observation  that  "men  of  profound 
and  noble  mind  are  generally  inclined  to  sad- 
ness" has  been  taken  as  an  axiom.  We  think  of 
Camoens,  Tasso,  Young,  and  Byron  as  wrapt  in 
gloom.  The  hypochondria  of  Camoens  and 
Tasso  has  been  used  as  the  subject  of  dramatists, 
and  we  are  moved  by  their  sufferings,  as  we  are 
by  the  sorrows  of  Young  and  Byron.  But  all  this 
has  no  bearing  on  the  everyday  world  about  us. 
Let  great  men  express  and  explain,  as  best  they 


158  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

may,  the  nature  of  their  feelings;  but  let  us  not 
mistake  the  moroseness  and  mawkishness  of  the 
modern  writer  for  evidence  of  genius. 

The  hypochondriac,  no  matter  what  his  men- 
tal endowments,  is  always  an  egotist.  Poets, 
accustomed  to  analyze  their  feelings  and  to  look 
upon  themselves  as  exceptional  beings,  are  par- 
ticularly liable  to  distorted  views  of  life.  Culti- 
vate sympathy  with  the  world,  says  Feuchters- 
leben,  study  history,  and  you  will  cease  to  mag- 
nify your  petty  vexations. 

There  are  but  two  real  sources  of  enjoyment 
— the  cultivation  of  the  mind  and  the  study  of 
nature.  The  two  go  hand  in  hand,  for  the  beauty 
and  grandeur  of  nature  cannot  unfold  themselves 
to  our  senses  without  elevating  and  broadening 
the  mind.  After  saying  all  that  can  be  said  in 
praise  of  the  society  of  our  fellow-men — and  we 
cannot  forget  that  it  teaches  us  the  greatest  les- 
son we  can  learn,  namely,  to  do  our  duty — it 
remains  true  that  only  in  the  companionship  of 
nature  can  we  find  true  happiness.  Of  all  classes 
of  scholars,  naturalists  live  longest  and  enjoy  the 
happiest  old  age.  Just  as  genuine  love  of  nature, 
in  order  to  be  truly  fruitful,  requires  of  us  a 


THE   HYGIENE  OF   THE   SOUL  159 

childlike  disposition,  so,  in  turn,  fondness  for 
nature  begets  in  her  devotees  a  peculiar  child- 
like simplicity,  and  restores  to  them  their  youth. 
Every  intellectual  effort  is,  in  the  last  analysis, 
an  inquiry  into  the  laws  of  nature;  and  we  retain 
mental  health  and  happiness  only  by  thinking 
and  acting  in  accordance  with  these  laws,  thus 
bringing  our  inner  life  into  harmony  with  the 
harmony  of  all  nature.  Even  the  savage  instinc- 
tively recognizes  the  truth  of  this,  for  nature  has 
implanted  in  his  breast  a  sense  of  her  beauty, 
just  as  she  has  implanted  it  in  the  heart  of  every 
child.  Beyond  this  even  a  Newton  cannot  go, 
as  he  contemplates  the  wonders  of  the  universe, 
and  only  in  this  way  do  all  created  beings  answer 
the  purpose  of  nature — that  they  learn  to  know 
their  place  and  find  satisfaction  in  filling  it. 
Every  one  of  us  is  like  Antaeus,  receiving  strength 
from  loving  contact  with  Mother  Earth.  Na- 
ture recognizes  and  reinforces  whatever  individ- 
ual capacity  we  possess;  she  excites  no  passions, 
but  rather  counteracts  them  and  makes  apparent 
their  futility.  She  educates  us  gently,  but  surely 
and  ceaselessly. 

Communion  with  nature  develops  all  the  pow- 


l6o  INTERNATIONAL   MINDS 

ers  within  us.  She  addresses  herself  to  every 
part  of  our  organic  being,  filling  our  imagina- 
tion with  lofty  images,  and  restraining  the  will, 
while  giving  it  iron  firmness.  Her  vast  silence 
instructs  us;  the  grand  but  simple  workings  of 
her  eternal  laws  awal^en  in  us  fruitful  thought, 
the  unvarying  course  of  her  events  establishes 
our  mental  equilibrium;  the  beauties  which  she 
scatters  in  endless  profusion  across  our  path,  in 
lovely  blossoms  as  in  the  starry  skies,  dispel  our 
petty  cares  and  selfish  anxieties;  her  greatness 
lifts  us  above  our  own  self,  until  all  our  feelings, 
thoughts  and  desires,  merge  in  the  contemplation 
of  the  universe,  which  in  turn  leads  us  gently  to 
religion — the  highest  sentiment  of  wiiich  man 
is  capable.  But  while  all  moral  and  intellectual 
efforts  tend  to  fit  into  the  universal  plan,  we  must 
keep  in  mind  that  the  individual  is  called  upon 
to  cultivate  his  own  narrow  field,  and  to  bestow 
on  it  the  same  care  which  the  husbandman  gives 
to  his  little  farm;  for  each  of  us  can  do  no  more 
than  perform  the  part  assigned  to  him. 

In  summing  up  the  lessons  which  his  Hygiene 
of  the  Soul  endeavors  to  inculcate,  Feuchters- 
leben  lays  stress  on  the  necessity,  for  purely  prac- 


THE  HYGIENE  OF  THE  SOUL  i6l 

tical  reasons,  of  starting  with  the  belief  that  the 
mind  possesses  the  power  to  influence  the  body. 
"I  shall  leave  it  to  theorists,"  he  says,  "to  explain 
the  mystery  of  this  influence;  I  am  only  con- 
cerned with  the  practical  task  of  proving  its 
possibility  by  actual  facts."  A  firm  belief  in 
the  power  of  the  mind  over  the  body  is,  how- 
ever, not  the  only  prerequisite  of  mental  and 
physical  health.  We  must  acquire  the  art  of 
looking  at  ourselves  objectively.  He  who  con- 
stantly watches  his  bodily  conditions  turns  into 
a  self-tormentor  and  may  end  in  madness,  while 
he  who  goes  his  way  heedless  of  himself  will 
never  acquire  self-control.  Yet  let  us  not  take 
our  task  too  seriously.  A  cheerful  glance  at  our- 
selves is  all  that  is  necessary,  for  a  species  of  sane 
self-irony  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  true 
philosophy  of  life.  Let  us  strengthen  our  will, 
learn  to  concentrate  our  attention,  cultivate  our 
esthetic  sense,  "pray  for  a  pure  heart  and  great 
thought,"  and  study  nature — thus  shall  we  enjoy 
peace  of  mind,  which  means  happiness. 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S  APHORISMS 

Next  to  the  Diatetik,  none  of  the  writings  of 
Feuchtersleben  appeal  to  so  wide  a  public  as  his 
maxims  and  aphorisms,  which  may  be  found 
scattered  through  his  collected  works  under  such 
headings  as:  "Leaves  from  the  Diary  of  a 
Lonely  Man,"  "Concerning  Knowledge,"  "Art," 
and  "Life."  Feuchtersleben,  like  Grillparzer, 
was  in  the  habit  of  confiding  to  his  diary,  with- 
out thought  of  publication,  much  of  what  he 
wrote  on  the  multitude  of  subjects  which 
claimed  his  attention.  The  specimens  here 
selected  cannot  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  the 
wide  range  of  his  intellectual  interests,  though 
they  sufficiently  illustrate  the  humane  and  philo- 
sophic spirit  which  animates  whatever  he  wrote. 


It  is  a  useful  occupation  to  look  in  great  writ- 
ers for  a  treatment  of  those  problems  that  are 
not  strictly  within  their  province,  such  as,  for 
instance,  questions  of  natural  science  in  the  writ- 
ings of  poets.  We  often  find  that  he  who  is  at 
home  in  any  department  of  knowledge  accepts 
only  what  is  handed  down  by  other  authorities, 

[162] 


feuchtersleben's  aphorisms        163 

while  the  amateur  looks  upon  the  matter  in  an 
entirely  new  light.  Thus  I  found  in  Kant's 
minor  writings — which,  by  the  way,  are  of  ines- 
timable value— hints  which  are  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  the  physician. 


To  read  books  in  foreign  languages  has  this 
good  result:  it  emancipates  us  from  the  tyranny 
of  empty  phrases,  and  forces  us  to  stop  and  think 
when  we  come  across  a  word  which  we  do  not 
understand.  We  Germans  feel  happy  when 
what  we  read  sounds  like  tinkling  bells. 


Let  no  one  say:  This  is  a  book  after  my  own 
heart,  it  expresses  just  what  I  should  have  said. 
One  ought  never  to  read  in  order  to  be  con- 
firmed in  one's  pet  views.  Books  ought  to  lead 
us  on,  limit  our  horizon,  or  enlarge  it,  and  cor- 
rect and  instruct  us. 


The  elements  of  natural  history  ought  to  be 
taught  to  children;  art,  that  is  to  say  the  beauti- 
ful, to  youths;  with  philosophy — abstract  truth 
- — let  the  mature  grapple  as  best  they  can;  while 
the  old  may  have  their  say  about  history. 


164  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

The  cry  of  the  day  is  ever  for  the  new.  We 
want  to  be  surprised,  amused,  and  helped  to 
kill  time.  This  is  the  extent  of  our  interest  in 
art  and  literature.  Yet  how  much  more  profit- 
able is  it  to  become  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
one  single  noble  character,  one  solitary  great 
intellect. 


What  is  called  "flattery"  is  for  the  right- 
minded  generally  humiliating,  for  when  we  are 
flattered  we  secretly  have  the  feeling  that  vv^hat 
we  are  credited  with  is  the  opposite  of  the  quali- 
ties we  possess.  Why  be  flattered  at  being 
thought  capable  of  doing  what  we  know  we  can- 
not perform? 


We  can  acquire  and  learn  everything,  except 
delicacy  of  feeling. 


We  all  have  reason,  and  yet  how  few  of  us 
are  reasonable.  "Public  opinion!"  We  are  suf- 
ficiently plagued  by  the  opinions  of  single  indi- 
viduals. What  must  be  an  opinion  made  up  of 
such  units!  And  yet  what  should  we  call  that 
instinct  which  gradually  recognizes  what  is  gen- 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S  APHORISMS  1 65 

nine,  and  rejects  and  consigns  to  oblivion  what 
is  worthless? 


Happy  is  he  to  whom  life  becomes  a  poem, 
but  woe  to  him  who  substitutes  poetry  for  life. 


What  do  we  most  admire  in  the  Athenians? 
That  they  recognized  the  greatness  of  Aristo- 
phanes side  by  side  with  that  of  Socrates. 


Refinement  and  good  manners  cannot  be  too 
highly  appreciated,  for  they  are  the  outward 
form  of  the  intrinsically  good  and  beautiful,  and 
even  imitation  cannot  fail  gradually  to  awaken 
in  us  a  desire  to  be  in  reality  what  we  merely 
seem  to  be.  Like  honor  itself,  prevailing  cus- 
tom is  a  lever  which  lifts  us  in  the  direction  of 
virtue.  Decorum,  like  virtue,  consists  in  self- 
control;  it  improves  him  who  practises  it,  for  he 
soon  perceives  that  there  is  no  better  way  of 
appearing  refined  than  by  being  so. 


■  It  is  unjust  to  condemn  the  use  of  foreign 
words  in  cases  where  one's  own  language  proves 
inadequate.    The  educated  writer  will  sacrifice 


1 66  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

a  narrow  grammatical  patriotism  to  the  demands 
of  higher  culture.  As  into  a  vast  sea  of  fluid 
thought,  which  surrounds  and  unites  all  coun- 
tries, he  will  delve  into  the  linguistic  treasures 
of  all  and  appropriate  what  he  needs  in  order 
to  create  definite  images.  Rich  sources  of 
knowledge  and  rare  opportunities  for  the  broad- 
ening of  human  ties  will  thus  be  open  to  him. 


What  I  teach  and  confess  to  is  not  optimism 
(as  has  been  asserted  somewhere),  for  I  insist 
that  the  dark  side  of  things  must  not  be  ignored; 
not  quietism,  for  I  lay  stress  on  constant  activity 
in  the  search  for  what  is  right,  and  in  the  doing 
of  it;  not  scepticism,  for  the  assertion  that  there 
are  two  sides  to  all  things,  and  that  there  is  some 
truth  in  each,  does  not  mean  that  everything  is 
either  true  or  false;  not  objectivism,  for  I  would 
not  deprive  the  individual  of  an  iota  of  his 
rights;  least  of  all  indiflferentism,  for  my  concep- 
tion of  life  presupposes  an  active  interest  in 
every  form  of  human  thought  and  endeavor, 
be  it  knowledge,  art,  or  the  ordinary  concerns  of 
life,  in  all  of  which  there  is  room  for  an  endless 
variety  of  opinions  and  deeds. 


feuchtersleben's  aphorisms        167 

Mathematicians  and  musicians  often  display 
a  certain  intellectual  narrowness,  while  jurists 
manifest  great  keenness  and  vivacity  of  mind. 
Mathematicians  and  musicians,  up  to  a  certain 
point,  exhibit  but  the  workings  of  a  mechanism 
which  deals,  in  a  prescribed  fashion,  with 
objects  that  can  be  perceived  by  the  senses;  it  is 
only  wdien  they  reach  out  into  a  higher  sphere, 
attained  by  the  few  who  attempt  to  find  the  laws 
of  this  mechanism,  that  the  higher  intellect  is 
called  into  play.  The  jurist,  on  the  other  hand, 
deals  wath  laws  that  have  to  take  cognizance 
of  constantly  changing  circumstances.  All  prob- 
lems of  life  may  be  regarded  in  the  light  of  cases 
at  law  and  treated  as  such.  Indeed,  what  is 
practical  philosophy  but  jurisprudence  as  ap- 
plied to  God  and  man? 


We  find  it  much  easier  to  think  of  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul  in  connection  with  a  soldier 
who  has  fallen  in  battle  than  with  a  man  who 
has  been  devoured  by  a  bear.  Why?  Because 
we  think  only  in  an  anthropomorphic  way. 


Literary   clubs   never   promote   anything   but 


1 68  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

mediocrity.  Small  talents  come  there  to  the  sur- 
face and  produce  a  momentary  impression  sim- 
ply because  they  are  parts  of  a  whole. 


Gifted  young  men  must  not  be  much  lectured 
to  or  contradicted,  else  there  is  danger  of  pro- 
voking in  them  a  secret  pride  which  may  become 
all  the  more  arrogant  because  secret.  In  fact, 
an  enforced  humility  is  ever  both  cause  and 
symptom  of  an  inner  conceit. 


Only  he  impresses  me  permanently,  and  has 
my  fullest  confidence,  who  is  capable  of  smiling 
at  his  own  limitations. 


It  is  immoral  and  leads  to  ruin,  to  coddle  one's 
feelings,  even  those  that  are  moral. 


Genius  needs  and  deserves  no  praise.  It  is 
not  the  result  of  its  own  efforts.  But  industry 
and  moral  worth  deserve  recognition  and  glory. 
Such  will  be  the  rule  when  mankind  shall  have 
attained  a  higher  state  of  perfection.  Then  the 
world  will  enjoy  its  Homers,  and  it  will  erect 
monuments  to  its  Aristideses. 


feuchtersleben's  aphorisms        169 

Benefactions,  alms,  a  kindly  and  charitable 
behavior,  are  but  poor  substitutes  for  true 
morality.  Indeed,  there  are  many  men  who  buy, 
as  it  were,  their  exemption  from  the  higher  obli- 
gations of  honesty  and  the  practice  of  real  vir- 
tue by  a  show  of  these  practices.  They  pass  in 
life  and  in  society  for  good  people,  but  the 
Almighty  reads  their  hearts.  Truly  good  deeds 
are  those  that  render  doing  good  unnecessary. 


Both  the  panegyrists  and  the  detractors  of 
so-called  simple  common  sense  ought  to  take 
pains  to  distinguish  between  sound  sense  and 
common  sense.  Sound  sense  never  refuses  to 
recognize  that  there  are  higher  things,  while 
common  sense,  in  its  narrow  selfishness,  often 
denies  the  existence  of  anything  better  than 
itself. 


Nothing  is  morally  so  inefifective  as  undue 
moralizing;  indeed,  nothing  is  more  certain  to 
produce  the  contrary  of  what  is  intended.  If, 
for  instance,  we  depict  the  misfortune  of  being 
rich  so  graphically  as  to  provoke  a  smile  on  the 
part  of  the  rich  man  present,  other  listeners  will 


I  JO  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

refuse  to  believe  even  what  is  true  in  our  story. 
This  ought  to  be  particularly  impressed  upon 
writers  who  undertake  to  paint  the  tortures  of 
an  evil  conscience  in  too  glaring  colors.  They 
overlook  the  fact  that  there  must  be  a  highly 
developed  conscience  before  its  voice  can  be 
heard.  Only  he  who  is  good  is  troubled  in  con- 
science by  his  lapses,  not  the  common  evil-doer. 
The  mediocre  man,  who  is  neither  good  nor  bad, 
consoles  himself  in  listening  to  some  writer's 
harrowing  story,  with  the  reflection:  "Thank 
Heaven,  I  am  spared  such  tortures!" — and 
becomes  more  than  ever  confirmed  in  his 
mediocrity. 


It  is  a  common  thing  to  say  that  one  may 
compel  respect,  but  not  love.  Precisely  the  con- 
trary is  true.  It  is  possible  to  call  forth  love  by 
a  charm  of  manner  which  tells  on  every  one; 
respect,  on  the  other  hand,  is  rendered  only  by 
the  few  who  are  themselves  worthy  of  it.  It  is 
a  sentiment  which  presupposes  a  far  higher  de- 
gree of  ethical  development  than  is  found  in  the 
average  man.  You  may  be  ever  so  deserving  of 
respect,  yet  you  will  never  compel  the  masses 


feuchtersleden's  aphorisms        171 

to  render  you  a  tribute  which   is  foreign  and 
burdensome  to  their  feelings. 


Conscience  is  but  good  taste  in  ethical  mat- 
ters. We  are  more  disgusted  by  what  is  vulgar 
than  by  crime  itself.  But,  again,  good  taste  may 
be  defined  as  conscience  in  aesthetic  matters. 


Whoever  enters  upon  public  office  ought  to 
pledge  himself  to  continue  for  at  least  one  year 
rigidly  in  the  ways  of  his  predecessor.  Thor- 
ough reforms  can  be  introduced  only  by  one  who 
knows  from  personal  experience  what  needs  re- 
forming, and  progress  will  then  be  possible  with- 
out provoking  reaction.  There  is  a  moral  value 
in  established  forms  which  those  familiar  with 
the  ways  of  the  world  know  how  to  appreciate. 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S  INFLUENCE 

Feuchtersleben's  Didtetik  has,  in  a  singular 
degree,  won  alike  popular  success  and  the  en- 
comiums of  physicians.  Dr.  Max  Neuburger, 
professor  of  the  history  of  medicine  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Vienna,  speaks  of  it  as  a  work  "popu- 
lar in  the  best  sense  of  the  word  but  far  removed 
from  the  ordinary  run  of  books  w^hich  deal  with 
medical  matters  in  a  popular  way,  and  merely 
breed  dilettanteism  and  hypochondria,  while 
undermining  faith  in  medicine  itself,  to  the 
detriment  of  the  patient."  "This  little  book," 
he  continues,  "is  among  the  most  beautiful  and 
valuable  possessions  of  German  literature.  It 
is  wholly  superfluous  to  speak  of  its  contents, 
for  who  does  not  know  this  song  of  songs  of  the 
power  of  the  will?  The  mere  mention  of  its 
title  awakens  in  most  of  us  recollections  of  our 
youth,  of  our  hours  of  irresoluteness,  weariness, 
despondency  and,  again,  of  self-conquest,  of 
awakening  confidence  and  renewed  joy  of  life. 
What  makes  this  book  permanently  great  is  that, 
reflecting  as  it  does  Feuchtersleben's  own  life, 
it  takes  hold  of  our  inmost  being,  so  that,  in  read- 

[172] 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S   INFLUENCE  173 

ing  it,  we  seem  to  live  over  the  author's  experi- 
ences. .  .  .  We  rise  from  its  pages  with  a  feel- 
ing of  renewed  strength;  indeed,  a  single  one  of 
his  aphorisms  outweighs  volumes  of  discourses 
on  moral  treatment." 

Feuchtersleben's  success  would  not  have  been 
as  real  as  it  was  had  he  lacked  a  sense  of  humor 
— that  delicate  gift  without  which  moral  writ- 
ings rarely  pass  into  literature.  In  a  treatise 
republished  in  1849  under  the  title  of  Physicians 
and  the  Public,  there  are  some  passages  that 
recall  our  own  philosopher-physician  Holmes, 
and  they  are  as  true  to-day  as  when  first  penned, 
nearly  eighty  years  ago.  "Everybody,"  says 
Feuchtersleben,  "wants  to  be  a  physician,  and 
everybody  thinks  himself  entitled  to  ridicule  the 
doctors.  Old  women  (and  young  ones,  too) 
dabble  in  our  art,  and  pass  judgment  on  us.  .  .  . 
Their  ranks  are  reinforced  by  the  hypochon- 
driacs, who  feed  on  the  poison  which  they  suck 
out  of  medical  books,  and  which  they  get  rid  of 
only  to  wish  that  it  might  kill  the  doctors." 
What  was  so  well  said  in  the  New  York  Evening/ 
Post  apropos  of  a  celebration  in  honor  of  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  may  be  applied,  mutatis  mu- 


174  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

tandis,  to  Feuchtersleben:  "In  these  days  of 
Christian  Science,  psycho-therapy  and  ghost- 
craft,  nothing  would  be  more  attractive,  and  few 
things  would  be  more  enlightening,  than  such 
comment  as  he  would  have  made  on  these 
developments." 

M.  Adrien  Delondre,  in  his  sympathetic  study 
of  Feuchtersleben,  has  pointed  out  a  certain 
vagueness  in  his  language,  beginning  with  the 
very  title  of  his  book.  It  may  be  granted  that 
his  use  of  the  word  "soul"  may  at  times  be  puz- 
zling alike  to  the  scientist  and  the  theologian. 
Above  all,  the  logician  will  find  a  contradiction 
between  Feuchtersleben's  effort  to  establish  the 
sovereignty  of  the  will  over  the  soul,  and  the 
doubt  implied  as  to  the  very  existence  of  a  soul 
in  such  a  passage  as  this: 

"I  shall  leave  it  to  philosophers  who  have  time 
to  waste  to  inquire  into  the  distinction  between 
body  and  soul,  or  even  to  try  to  prove  the  exist- 
ence of  one  and  the  other.  It  matters  little 
whether  I  assign  to  the  soul  the  power  which 
materialists  attribute  to  a  certain  portion  of  the 
body,  whose  function  it  is  to  think  and  to  will. 
By  whatever  name  we  may  designate  the  cause, 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S  INFLUENCE  175 

the  effect  does  not  change,  nor  does  the  lesson 
which  I  draw  from  it." 

Feuchtersleben's  unique  distinction  is  that  all 
his  vast  scientific  equipment  and  all  his  literary 
pursuits  served  only  one  purpose — the  welfare 
of  his  fellow  men.  He  w^as,  as  Professor  Richard 
M.  Meyer  says,  above  all  "an  educator  of  the 
people,"  and  amidst  all  his  interests  the  interests 
of  humanity  were  ever  the  highest.  Lessing's 
Nathan  der  W else  was  to  him  the  embodiment 
of  wisdom  in  literature.  "Nothing  purer  than 
this  book,"  he  wrote,  "ever  came  from  man's 
soul  and  hand."  Purely  metaphysical  specula- 
tion, aside  from  ethical  purposes,  was  not  to  his 
liking,  and  therefore  the  Fichtes,  Hegels  and 
Schellings  had  little  attraction  for  him,  al- 
though he  knew  them  as  well  as  his  Goethe, 
Herder  and  Kant.  In  all  philosophic  systems  he 
looked,  above  all,  for  the  man  behind  the  writer 
and  for  the  genuineness  of  his  interest  in  his  fel- 
low men.  His  aesthetic  ideals  he  found  in  Plato; 
his  own  unbiased  spirit  of  observation  made 
him  an  admirer  of  the  method  of  Bacon.  What 
he  thought  as  a  philosopher,  he  practised  as  a 
physician.     He  demanded  for  his  profession  the 


176  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

highest  ethical  and  scientific  standards.  "Shall 
we  believe,"  he  wrote  in  a  paper  on  Aerzte  und 
Publicum  (Physicians  and  the  Public),  "that 
medicine  is  nothing  but  a  collection  of  names  for 
diseases  and  remedies  which  can  be  learned  by 
heart  and  made  available,  at  will,  by  purely 
mechanical  practice?  Nothing  can  be  further 
from  the  truth.  Medicine  is  a  science  which,  to 
use  the  striking  expression  of  a  high  authority, 
'keeps  all  the  faculties  of  the  physician  busy, 
because  it  busies  itself  with  all  the  faculties  of 
man.'  Nay,  it  is  more  than  a  science,  it  is  an 
art.  For  art  is  simply  knowledge  turned  into 
action,  and  action  always  calls  for  all  there  is 
in  us — our  intellectual  powers  as  well  as  our 
physical.  No  man  of  weak  character  can  suc- 
ceed in  any  art.  Every  profession  and  occupa- 
tion has  its  peculiar  requirements  that  have  to 
be  understood;  it  is  so  with  the  priest,  the  gov- 
ernment official,  the  soldier,  and  the  scholar. 
How,  then,  can  the  half-educated  physician 
understand  the  conditions  surrounding  a  Goethe, 
Kant,  and  a  Rahel?*    Woe  to  the  physical  wel- 

*Rahel  Levin  (1771-1833),  one  of  the  most  brilliant  women 
of  her  day,  who  married  in  1814  the  writer  Varnhagen  von  Ense. 
She  was  a  centre  of  attraction  in  the  literary  circles  of  Berlin. 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S  INFLUENCE  1 77 

fare  of  such  highly  gifted  beings  if  their  family 
physician  be  unable  to  judge  of  the  requirements 
of  their  individuality." 

Equally  emphatic  was  his  voice  in  those  politi- 
cal questions  for  whose  solution  he  so  disinterest- 
edly labored.  Though  devoted  to  mankind,  he 
was  no  flatterer  of  the  people,  and  when,  during 
the  revolutionary  agitation  of  1848,  thoughtless 
demands  for  the  uprooting  of  all  existing  con- 
ditions were  loudest,  he,  like  his  friend  Grill- 
paizer,  dared  to  call  for  moderation  and  quiet 
reflection. 

"The  great  question  of  the  day,"  he  wrote, 
"presses  for  solution,  yet  finds  us  irresolute.  The 
source  of  all  precious  gifts,  liberty,  is  disclosed 
to  our  eyes.  Our  parched  lips  thirst  for  its 
blessings,  yet,  like  Tantalus  of  old,  again  and 
again  we  see  it  disappear.  We  all  know  what 
obstructions  are  in  the  path  of  the  progressive 
development  of  constitutional  life  in  all  those 
European  states  that  are  now  shaken  by  tremen- 
dous convulsions.  .  .  .  Are  questions  which 
have  taxed  the  greatest  thinkers  and  legislators 
of  all  times  and  all  nations — a  Moses,  Solon, 
Plato,  Aristotle,  Montesquieu,  Rousseau,  Leib- 


178  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

nitz,  Spinoza  and  Kant — to  be  decided  by  the 
most  ignorant?" 

Feuchtersleben  cannot,  any  more  than  Plato, 
be  considered  to  have  been  a  friend  of  democ- 
racy, but,  as  Jowett  has  said,  the  term  has  hardly 
any  meaning  when  applied  to  a  philosopher 
whose  writings  are  not  meant  for  a  particular 
age  and  country,  but  for  all  times  and  all  man- 
kind. The  word  "democracy"  meant  as  little  to 
Feuchtersleben  as  the  catch-words  "nation"  and 
"race."  With  Herder,  his  fatherland  was  hu- 
manity, but  if  he  saw  no  magic  virtue  in  the 
ignorant  will  of  the  common  man,  neither,  on  the 
other  hand,  did  he  share  the  conservative  dread 
of  "republicanism."  "From  our  earliest  youth," 
he  wrote,  "we  have  always  heard  of  republican 
virtues,  never  of  republican  vices.  The  justice 
of  an  Aristides,  the  severity  of  a  Cato,  the  self- 
denial  of  a  Brutus,  the  heroic  obedience  of  a 
Regulus,  the  nobility  of  a  Sidney,  Washington, 
Bolivar,  the  humanity  of  a  Franklin — are  these 
the  horrible  spectres  against  which  we  are  now 
warned  with  such  extreme  anxiety?  Are  not  a 
love  of  the  commonwealth  and  unshakable  fidel- 
ity to  the  law,   as   it  exists,   the  characteristics 


FEUCHTERSLEBEN'S  INFLITEXCE  1 79 

of  republican  virtue?  The  error  lies  solely  in 
confounding  the  words  'republic'  and  'democ- 
racy.' " 

If  Feuchtersleben  wasted  no  time  in  trying 
to  build  up  a  system  of  metaphysics — "the  art  of 
going  astray  methodically" — he  drew  constant 
inspiration  from  the  great  thinkers  of  antiquity. 
Yet,  a  wide  gulf  separates  him,  in  one  impor- 
tant aspect,  from  the  two  ancients  whose  views 
of  life  most  resembled  his  own — Epictetus  and 
Marcus  Aurelius.  The  image  of  death,  as  a 
factor  to  be  daily  reckoned  with  in  man's 
thoughts,  had  no  place  in  Feuchtersleben's  phi- 
losophy, not  even  as  a  means  of  arousing  man  to 
a  higher  morality.  Epictetus's  indifference  to 
the  inquiries  of  the  physical  philosophers,  more- 
over, is  in  marked  contrast  to  Feuchtersleben's 
insatiable  thirst  for  scientific  data,  as  the  safe 
basis  of  metaphysical  speculation.  Marcus  Au- 
relius's  lofty  character,  rather  than  the  cast  of 
his  philosophy,  must  be  considered  as  one  of  the 
permanent  influences  on  Feuchtersleben's  mind. 
The  two  were  akin  in  that  their  philosophy  did 
not  spend  itself  in  systematic  search  for  abstract 
truth,  but  proceeded  from  pronounced  ethical 


l8o  IXTERXATIONAL   MINDS 

convictions  and  an  active,  though  unformed,  re- 
ligious feeling.  Feuchtersleben  had  all  of  Mar- 
cus Aurelius's  virtue  of  moderation,  his  sense  of 
the  futility  of  ambition,  his  ideals  of  peaceful 
happiness  within  the  home;  but  he  never  coun- 
selled renunciation  of  the  pleasures  of  life. 
Least  of  all  had  he  the  gloomy  resignation  of  a 
Pascal.  "All  our  pleasures  are  but  vanity;  there 
is  no  good  in  this  life  save  in  the  hope  of  an- 
other"— this  doctrine  had  no  part  in  Feuchters- 
leben's  creed.  His  theory  and  practice  were  in 
accord  with  Montaigne's  saying  that  "of  all  the 
benefits  of  virtue  the  contempt  of  death  is  the 
chiefest,  a  means  that  furnishes  our  life  with  an 
easeful  tranquility,  and  gives  us  a  pure  and 
amiable  taste  of  it."  As  a  teacher  of  practical 
morality,  Feuchtersleben,  in  some  respects,  re- 
sembled Locke.  He  had  in  common  with  Locke 
the  deep  interest  in  popular  education,  the  sim- 
plicity of  method  and  sincerity  of  expression,  the 
blending  of  idealism  and  realism  in  the  variety 
of  intellectual  pursuits.  The  direct  effect  of  all 
of  Feuchtersleben's  writings  is  one  of  elevating 
stimulation,  an  increased  sense  of  the  beautiful 
and  enjoyable  in  life — the  very  opposite  of  what 


feuchtersleben's  influence        i8i 

Matthew  Arnold  describes  as  the  result  of  read- 
ing Epictetus  or  Marcus  Aurelius:  "a  sense  of 
constraint  and  melancholy." 

Perhaps  Feuchtersleben's  spirit  was  most 
closely  akin  to  that  of  Vauvenargues,  "one  of 
the  most  tender,  lofty,  cheerful,  and  delicately 
sober  of  all  moralists,"  as  Morley  calls  him,  and 
as  Feuchtersleben  equally  was.  He  possessed 
all  of  Vauvenargues's  humaneness,  his  wide 
tolerance  and  gentle  persuasiveness,  and  was 
like  him  in  that  poetic  phrasing  which  heightens 
the  efifectiveness  of  a  thought  while  apparently 
veiling  it.  Do  we  not  seem  to  hear  the  voice 
of  Feuchtersleben  in  the  saying  of  Vauvenar- 
gues :  "Every  condition  has  its  shadows  and  its 
lights;  every  nation  has  its  morals  and  its 
genius,  according  to  its  fortune;  the  Greeks, 
whom  we  surpass  in  fastidiousness,  surpassed  us 
in  simplicity"? 

The  permanent  influence  of  Feuchtersleben's 
Diiitetik  may  be  traced  in  the  uninterrupted 
flow  of  popular  works  on  psychological  subjects, 
both  in  this  country  and  abroad,  whose  keynote 
is  the  cultivation  of  will  power.  If  we  eliminate 
from  this  mass  of  books  those  whose  main  or 


1 82  INTERNATIONAL  MINDS 

subsidiary  motive  is  a  commercial  one,  or  which 
are  intended  to  pander  to  the  crazes  of  the  day, 
there  still  remains  a  respectable  substratum  of 
literature  whose  legitimate  object  is  the  cultiva- 
tion of  serenity  of  mind. 

One  cannot  close  a  summary  of  the  life  of 
Feuchtersleben  without  reverting  to  the  com- 
panion who  was  the  source  of  his  greatest  hap- 
piness. Feuchtersleben's  essays  contain  several 
allusions  to  his  beloved  Helene  and,  in  one  place, 
a  faithful  portrayal  of  her  principal  characteris- 
tics. She  is  described  as  having  been  "endowed 
by  Providence  with  a  healthy,  frank  and  cheer- 
ful nature,  which  won  her  every  true  heart,  as 
well  as  with  the  blessed  gift  of  looking  at  the 
world  clearly  and  serenely,  without  ever  making 
selfish  demands  or  assuming  superior  airs."  An 
uneducated  young  girl  of  the  lower  Vienna 
bourgeoisie  when  she  first  became  acquainted 
with  him,  she  learned  to  enter  into  his  every 
thought  and  aspiration,  and  her  natural  intelli- 
gence ripened  under  his  influence  and  direct 
teaching  into  a  discriminating  knowledge  of  life 
and  literature.  She  shared  to  the  full  his  admir- 
ation for   the   great  writers   of   antiquity,    and 


feuciitersleben's  influence        183 

read  after  his  death  in  her  cloister-like  retire- 
ment, besides  his  own  works,  solely  the  Greek 
dramatists.  She  survived  her  husband  nearly 
thirty-three  years,  until  May  21,  1882. 


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